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#^<L^:.'-o cpv;,:;^-':^ /\-'^4''""" *"■' 







ADDEESSES OF 
JOHN HAY 



Ft 



ADDRESSES OF 
JOHN HAY 




.*» t^'oV>J 



WV»*^-S*W<«i?«^ 



NEW YORK 

THE CENTURY CO. 

1907 












Copyright, 1890, 1906, by 
The Century Co. 

Copyright, 1904, by Jamks D. Haqxtb 
Copyright, 1906, by The Cbitio Co. 



Published October, 1906 



THE OE VINNE PRESS 



CONTENTS 

PAGX 

I Franklin in France 1 

n OaiAR Khayyjjni 43 

ni Sir Walter Scott 51 

IV Speeches before the American Society 

EST London 61 

V A Partnership in Beneficence ... .75 
VI Speech at the Annual Dinner of the 

Royal Society 81 

vn Speech at the Annual Dinner of the 

Literary Fund 87 

vin Speech at the Opening, by Miss Helen 

Hay, of the Robert Browning 

Garden 97 

IX International Copyright 103 

X American Diplomacy Ill 

XI A Festival of Peace 127 

xn William McKinley 135 

xiii At the Universities 177 

V 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

XIV COMIIERCIAL ClUB DiNNER 191 

XV New Orleans 201 

XVI The Grand Ariniy of the Republic . . 207 

XVII President Roosevelt 217 

xvni Edmund Clarence Stedman .... 227 

xrx Lincoln's Faith 235 

XX The Press and Modern Progress . . 241 

XXI Fifty Years of the Republican Party 261 

xxn America's Love of Peace 303 

xxTiT Life in the White House m the Tnm 

OF Lincoln 319 

XXIV Clarence King 343 



VI 



FEANKLIN IN FRANCE 

PREPARED FOR THE MERCHANTS' CLUB OF CHICAGO, 
DECEMBER, 1904, BUT NOT DELIVERED, OWING TO THE 
DEATH OF A BROTHER OF MR. HAY. PUBLISHED 
IN THE CENTURY MAGAZINE FOR JANUARY, 1906 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 



WHEN the men of the Revolution threw 
into the game of war their lives, their 
fortunes, and their sacred honor, they meant 
to stand by their solemn professions. They 
intended to fight the battle out— to stand or 
fall with the principles they had announced. 
They were ready for death and defeat, but they 
were resolved on life and victory. They held 
success to be their inunediate duty. They were 
not greedy of glory ; they wanted liberty. And 
they were anxious to gain this inestimable good 
in the quickest possible way. They cast their 
eyes over-seas to search for what help might 
come from abroad. If there was among the na- 
tions of Europe a sense of wrong, a jealousy, 
or an antipathy to England which might be use- 
ful to their cause, a motive of interest, a spirit 
of gain, which might be caught and set to work 

3 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

for the new and struggling freedom, they 
were ready to use them. The gnomes working 
for the heroes was a well-worn myth. They 
knew they were fighting the battle of the human 
race. Let the human race lend a hand, if it 
would. 

So, one of the early acts of the Continental 
Congress was to form a secret committee to 
correspond with friends abroad. It was com- 
posed of five members, Benjamin Franklin, 
John Jay, Thomas Johnson, John Dickinson, 
and Benjamin Harrison— names we all recog- 
nize yet. The committee was a strong one. 
Franklin was the most skilled diplomatist in 
the colonies, by natural aptness and by tech- 
nical experience. So the bulk of the work nat- 
urally devolved upon him. He began corre- 
pondence with British Liberals, Dutch Law- 
yers, French Doctors, and Spanish Princes. It 
took at least six months to exchange letters 
between Paris and Philadelphia. We can now 
scarcely imagine the sickening weariness of 
hope deferred in those days. 

To France, as the traditional enemy of Eng- 
land, all eyes were naturally turned. Mr. Jay 
relates a singular incident, which powerfully 

4 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

impressed many minds, of an old gentleman 
who arrived in Philadelphia in 1775, and of- 
fered to the Congress then in session, in good 
Parisian English, the assistance of the King 
of France, in stores, arms, ammunition, and 
money. Being asked for his name, credentials, 
and other ambassadorial baggage, he drew his 
hand across his throat and said politely but 
positively, ' ' Gentlemen, I shall take care of my 
head." No tombstone was ever more discreet 
than this old gentleman. He disappeared the 
next day from Philadelphia, and took such 
good care of his head that the keenest-scented 
annalists have never discovered a trace of him. 
If we were inclined to be superstitious, the only 
two circumstances we know of him— his 
Parisian accent and his tender care of his 
head— might induce us to take him for 'St. 
Denis. This and other incidents made men 
think and talk much of France. No letters 
came from Franklin's correspondents. The 
committee resolved to send an ambassador to 
France ; and a candidate turned up the moment 
he was wanted— Silas Deane, of Connecticut. 
It is a curious fact, and one which shows how 
our nation sprang at once fully developed into 

5 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

being, that our first foreign minister was a de- 
feated member of Congress. A quiet legation 
is the stuffed mattress which the political acro- 
bat wants always to see ready under him in 
case of a slip. 

Silas Deane sailed to France and soon set on 
foot very extensive business operations for the 
assistance of the colonies. With the aid of that 
strange mixture of charlatanry and genius, 
Caron de Beaumarchais, he sent a large quan- 
tity of valuable stores to America, and a small 
quantity of worthless officers. He had the 
favor and the secret assistance of the court. 
The virtuous and far-seeing Turgot, who 
knew there was much to lose and little to gain 
by the American alliance, after protesting in 
vain against the Beaumarchais interest, had 
been dismissed the cabinet. The Comte de 
Vergennes assisted the colonies privately with 
one hand, and with the other dexterously 
stroked the right way the fur of the irritated 
British lion. 

It was thought best, however, that stronger 
hands should take charge of this business. On 
September 26, 1776, Congress elected an em- 
bassy to France, consisting of its two most 

6 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

illustrious names. The choice of Franklin and 
Jefferson shows how vital the French alliance 
had come to be considered. Jefferson declined. 
Congress elected in his place Arthur Lee of 
Virginia. Mr. Deane was also retained in the 
embassy. 

When Franklin was elected in secret session 
he turned to Dr. Rush and said in shopman's 
phrase, *'I am an old remnant— you may have 
me for what you please. ' ' He was seventy 
years old and the most famous American of that 
day. He sailed in the swift sloop of war Re- 
prisal, Captain Wickes, which captured two 
prizes on the way; and about six weeks later 
he descended at the Hotel de Hambourg, in the 
Latin Quarter. I dined there once, for Frank- 
lin's sake. I hope the kitchen was better in 
his day. 

It was a wonderful France that he found. 
The old dispensation was drawing nigh its end, 
and no one dreamed it. The new daylight was 
dawning and the darkness comprehended it 
not. The best king of his race was sitting on 
his thorny throne, doing, according to his fee- 
ble lights, his best for the people who should 
one day slay him. Over his weak head were 

7 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

gathering the storms that had been brewing 
for centuries. His ancestors had eaten the 
sour grapes of tyranny, and his innocent teeth 
were set on edge. 

Through long ages of wrong and rapine and 
murder this great, patient France had sub- 
mitted to its masters. These are not phrases. 
The kings and great lords robbed and 
killed their vassals with no thought of account- 
ability. It was not a hundred years since the 
young Prince Charolais invented that humor- 
ous amusement of shooting tilers on the roofs 
of houses and seeing them roll and tumble into 
the street— from mere gaiety of heart, says 
the chronicler. Still in many parts of France 
that odious right of seigneurie was retained, 
which made peasant husbands loathe the face 
of their first-born. And everywhere there was 
no right of the poor that the rich man greatly 
respected. There was no feeling of the ple- 
beian which the noble thought worth caring 
for. The monarchy was still the most splendid 
of Europe. The court was more brilliant than 
anything the world will ever see again. There 
was an appearance of wealth and movement in 
the great cities. But in the fields there was 

8 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

gaunt famine and dull, hopeless misery. 
D'Argenson says that in 1738, an era cited as 
one of peace and prosperity, "men died thick 
as flies, in poverty and eating the grass of the 
fields." Rank had prepared its own destruc- 
tion by its crimes. Its part in the play was 
over. The groans of suffering humanity were 
not yet heard, but of God. He would take care 
of his little ones in due time. 

This vast French monarchy was undermined. 
The enormous power, built up with labor and 
pain by a long line of kings from Charlemagne 
to Louis le Grand, was gone: not the less ut- 
terly gone that no one saw it go, and no one 
had as yet marked its absence. It had grown 
by fitful though continual advances through 
the English wars of the Charleses, plucking al- 
ways prerogative from the bloody fields of 
disaster. It had grown stout and plethoric, fed 
with blood and nourished with crimes by that 
quaint and pious knave, Louis XL Before he 
died it was out of its nonage, and it flourished 
on without much effort on the part of the sub- 
sequent kings. In the reign of Louis XIV it 
reached its acme. So great a king as Louis 
never lived. Yet he was the most commonplace 

9 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

of men, were he not king. His reign was glo- 
rious, people say. That is, a great army and 
able generals, whom he let alone, fought 
frightful and useless battles which impover- 
ished France and gained nothing. He encour- 
aged arts and literature, by giving to Moliere 
and Racine, and the rest of those Titans, about 
the same distinction and favor which he would 
have given to a clever dancing-master. He 
built Versailles. This is the masterpiece, the 
outward manifestation of the consummate 
bloom, of European king-craft. This stu- 
pendous work was the last great effort of the 
royal prerogative— the last great enterprise 
which a king has undertaken without at least 
attempting to persuade the people that it was 
for their benefit. But this vast pile and these 
lordly pleasure-grounds say cynically to the 
world, ^'The King is the State." Monarchy 
has never recovered from the strain of that 
effort. It is the infallible symptom of deca- 
dence in a man or a government when it under- 
takes works which cannot pay expenses. The 
Pharaohs perished when their Pyramids were 
finished. Napoleon went to Moscow to meet 
his evil genius. Every country town in Amer- 

10 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

ica has the ruins of a fine house called some- 
body's ''Folly." 

This great King Louis died in a miserable old 
age, and they carted him off to St. Denis with 
small ceremony, and his great-grandson, Louis 
XV, reigned in his stead. But the regent of 
Orleans ruled over France in the babyhood of 
the King. We know what this candid prince 
thought of his own rule. He said one day to 
the Abbe Du Bois, his prime minister, ''A devil 
of a kingdom, this — governed by a sot and a 
pander!" A good-natured man, this Duke of 
Orleans, thoroughly corrupt, with good in- 
tentions that were never fulfilled, with amiable 
qualities that led to nothing but shames and 
crimes. Breathing a poisoned air from his 
birth, moral health was impossible to him. He 
meant well to the people, but his vampires 
drew their blood and coined it to supply those 
mad revels of the Palais Royal that our decent 
age refuses to describe. His reign served to 
grade the passage from the Fourteenth to the 
Fifteenth Louis. 

And here the last word of the monarchy is 
indeed said. When a king like Louis XV be- 
comes possible, then the world begins to ask 
11 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

whether it may not get on without kings. The 
life of this unspeakably mean creature seems 
meant to show us how questionable is any 
system that may sometime give to utter de- 
pravity a practical omnipotence of mischief. 
There may have been others as licentious, as 
cowardly, as cruel, as false, as avaricious as 
he. But no other man could set these sordid 
vices up in the sight of the world, and by the 
accursed alchemy of power turn them to graces 
and examples to be praised and followed by all 
who were weakly loyal or meanly servile. This 
was the work of Louis the Well-beloved. He 
rolled in the garbage of vice so that the purple 
could hardly be clean again. He depraved and 
corrupted the court, so that from the courtier 
class nothing more was to be hoped. You would 
not pardon me if I should give you a catalogue 
of his enormous and cowardly crimes. One 
who reads attentively the memoirs of those 
times comes back as from a visit to a charnel- 
house. The tone of levity in which these hor- 
rors are recorded is the most saddening thing. 
This man was so flattered and fawned upon 
that his conscience went to sleep disgusted, and 
he really thought he was rather a good sort of 
fellow. 

12 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

That he might play out his part to the end he 
was granted robust health and long life. His 
last sin found him out, and he crowned a de- 
spicable life by a loathsome death. He was 
riding in the park and he saw a peasant's 
funeral go by. He rode up and asked who was 
dead. He turned pale at the answer— it was 
the name of his last victim. But some dread- 
ful fascination induced him to question again. 
What did she die of? '^ Smallpox, sire!" 
Gasping for horror, he dashed away to the 
palace and lay down to die. Carlyle has drawn 
with the unpitying hand of an avenging angel 
the scenes of that unedifying death-bed. The 
polluted soul broke loose at last, and sped away 
to its own place. The church blessed the part- 
ing. We will try to be charitable, too ; but we 
are irresistibly reminded of one of the few 
bitter things that Franklin ever said: ''If 
such souls escape, it is not worth while to keep 
a devil." 

The courtiers rushed to congratulate Louis 
XVI and Marie Antoinette on their accession 
to the throne. But they fell on their knees and 
said : ' ' Help us, God ! We are too young to 
govern. ' ' 

It was a true presentiment that saddened for 
13 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

the youthful and virtuous monarch this first 
moment of power. He did not see, as we do, the 
full extent of the monstrous debt that mon- 
archy owed to the moral equilibrium. He did 
not fully appreciate the deplorable state of his 
realm, in finance, in agriculture, in every in- 
cident of national life. Least of all did he un- 
derstand the mighty power of public opinion, 
which had been stealthily gaining ground 
through the last two reigns. A power had 
grown up never contemplated by earlier kings. 
A race of audacious thinkers had arisen— a 
modern growth for France. Under the great 
Louis, literature was encouraged, as cooking 
was, as music was, as tailoring was, to add to 
the splendor of the court. But under the Re- 
gency the new spirit came to light. The Regent 
loved letters for their own sake. He had a 
sentimental love for freedom, even; and if he 
had not been a Bourbon he might himself have 
been a patriot. Under him began that power- 
ful impulse of research and philosophical spec- 
ulation that continued amid neglect or im- 
potent, fitful persecution under the reign of 
Louis XV and reached its lordly stature and 
attained its predestined purpose in the wreck 
and chaos of the Revolution. 
14 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

The first conspicuous name among those who 
led the van of this great intellectual move- 
ment was Montesquieu, who began at twenty 
by writing an argument against the eternal 
damnation of the heathen, and through a long 
and busy life sent forth, in rapid succession, 
those bold and brilliant disquisitions that 
opened to the mind of France a vastly wider 
horizon of political speculation than ever had 
been dreamed of before. His *' Spirit of 
Laws ' ' alone ranks him with those great orig- 
inal geniuses that clasp hands in spirit 
across the gulf of ages. He was the earliest 
of the philosophers. He shines almost sole in 
his generation, clear as the morning star, un- 
conscious of the red tumult of the coming 
dawn. Then came Voltaire, who ran with 
that lightning-flash of intuition through the 
whole cycle of letters and science and politics, 
finding nothing good or venerable, touching 
with the Ithuriel spear of wit and logic every 
department of human affairs, and discover- 
ing everywhere only hopeless disease— as the 
wild humor caught him, now mocking like a 
fiend, now weeping like a pitying angel; and 
Diderot, with his great genius and incomplete 
character, his gigantic schemes and his little 
15 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

life, his mighty collaborators in the Encyclo- 
pedia, d'Alembert, de Prades, Dumarsais, 
and the incomparable Turgot, whose genius 
and virtue shine together, a beacon in those 
dark days— all these, working confusedly, 
without plan, were building up that vast edi- 
fice of public opinion which was to harbor and 
protect the free thought of the century. 

Never before had there been seen such 
activity in the natural sciences. Buffon and 
Malesherbes were busy plucking its mystery 
out from the heart of nature. 

In the world of metaphysics there was a 
vast and restless energy, with results always 
more disheartening. Condillac deduced all 
moral and mental phenomena from sensation. 
Helvetius, adopting the theories of Condillac, 
went mercilessly through to atheism and pure 
selfishness. The age was so corrupt, they 
cynically hailed this theory of absolute self- 
ishness as the new gospel and cried, ''This 
man has told everybody's secret. {''C'est 
un homme qui a dit le secret de tout le monde. ' ') 

The mind of the world seemed dropping 
into mere materialism, when a shabby fellow 
came to Paris and spoke a word that the 
16 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

world was vaguely waiting for. This was 
Jean Jacques Rousseau, who, weak, wicked, 
half mad as he was, demonstrated the impo- 
tence and barrenness of this materialist phi- 
losophy, and prepared, more than any other, 
the minds of men for the reception of the wild 
evangel of the Revolution. There was never 
a shabbier prophet sent on earth, but the les- 
son he taught was simple and necessary. He 
recalled to the world what the wits had for- 
gotten—that there are such facts as God, 
and love, and liberty. 

Floating at random in the writings of that 
century, we find scraps of prophecy not half 
understood by their authors and not at all by 
the world. Leibnitz said in 1704 that a revolu- 
tion was coming by which the great would 
lose and the world profit. Chesterfield said 
(1753), ''Before the end of this century the 
trades of king and priest will lose half their 
value." D'Argenson in 1739, in his great 
treatise on decentralization, practically elimi- 
nated the aristocracy,— aristocrat though he 
was,— calling them the drones of the hive, and 
enunciated the sublime doctrine that, though 
equality was impossible, it should be the aim 

17 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

of all governments to attain it. Voltaire said 
in 1764, with the dim regret of an old prophet 
who should not see the coming of the rosy 
footsteps on the momitains of the future, 
''Young men are lucky— they will see fine 
things." But Diderot came nearest the true 
spirit of the Pythoness possessed when he 
said in 1774, "The public execution of a king 
will change the spirit of a nation forever." 

These utterances sound startlingly clear 
and distinct to us after the fact. But then 
they were voices crying in the wilderness, and 
the world, if it heard them at all, smiled in- 
dulgently and tapped its wise forehead. 
Countless vague and indistinct systems of 
government had been shaped in philosophic 
garrets. But of late young men had begun to 
study constitutions— the Greek, the Roman, 
the English, and, later, those almost perfect 
specimens of statecraft afforded by the con- 
stitutions of the American Colonies, which 
were styled by Tom Paine the grammar of 
politics. They were to liberty what grammar 
is to language, defining its parts of speech 
and practically constructing them into syntax. 
The tempest in America was manifestly shap- 

18 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

ing the current of free thought in France. 
Thus did our nation, even in its godlike baby- 
hood, teach the doctors in the temple of 
liberty. 

I have delayed you some time with this 
resume of the state of thought and opinion in 
France at the arrival of Franklin, but I think 
you would pardon me if you knew how much 
I had rejected. It seemed necessary to say 
this much to explain in some measure the 
immediate and enormous popularity that 
greeted the American envoy. The world of 
pomp and glitter and tradition had in reality 
passed away. The age of ideas had dawned. 
To the sight of the world Franklin came as 
the agent of certain revolted colonies of 
England to seek material aid to sustain the 
hard-pushed rebellion. But to the en- 
lightened eye of history he is an envoy from 
the New World to the Old, addressing to its 
half-awakened heart and conscience the soul- 
stirring invitation to be free. No fitter choice 
was ever made by any nation in any age. 
There was too heavy a sea running to have 
any incompetence on the quarter-deck. 

An interest which we can scarcely compre- 
19 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

hend was taken in that day in natural science. 
Franklin was, by universal consent, the 
greatest natural philosopher of his time. He 
was hailed as the confidant of nature— the 
. playmate of the lightning, a Prometheus un- 
punished. The brightest constructive and 
critical energies of the best minds were de- 
voted to the solution of political problems. 
And here, they said, was a man who had 
founded many states upon the principles of 
abstract justice, and had consolidated them at 
last into a superb model republic. For this 
hasty generalization had seized the foreign 
mind, always too apt to regard leaders instead 
of masses, and it was long before the millions 
of Americans got their due abroad. 

Thus it came that the great heart of liberal 
France went out at once in a quick rush of 
welcome to Franklin. He was the point that 
attracted the overcharged electricity of that 
vast and stormy mass of active thought. He 
became the talk of the town. They made 
songs about him. They published more than 
one hundred and fifty engravings of him, so 
that his fur cap and spectacles became as 
familiar as the face of the King on the louis 

2D 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

d'or. The pit rose when he entered a theater. 
These are not trivial details. Those sponta- 
neous honors, paid to an alien citizen by a 
people so long the victims of degrading tutel- 
age, showed the progress they had made to- 
ward liberty. In honoring him they honored 
themselves. They vaguely felt he was fight- 
ing their battle. They read in his serene and 
noble countenance the promise of better 
times. 

He lived in free and generous style, in a 
fine house in Passy, to your right as you may 
have stood in Exhibition years on the ramp 
of the Trocadero and looked over the flashing 
Seine at the Festival of Peace in the Field of 
Mars. The company one met there was the 
best in France— the true elite; that is to say, 
elect. I will give you a few of their names : 
La Rochefoucauld, Morellet, Buffon, Turgot, 
Malesherbes, d'Alembert, Condorcet, d'Hol- 
bach, Cabanis, Necker, Mirabeau. I utter 
only names, yet how each starts a spirit! 
These men, princes all by intellect and many 
of them by birth, were proud of the friend- 
ship of Franklin. I must mention one curi- 
ously characteristic expression of Ralph 

21 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

Izard, who was taken by Congress from the 
bosom of one of the first families of South 
Carolina, and sent as minister to Tuscany. He 
accepted the mission as readily as did in our 
times a defeated Western senator who, on re- 
ceiving a despatch from an old public func- 
tionary whose name has escaped everybody's 
memory,— 'SWill you accept the mission to 
Bogota?"— replied in five minutes by light- 
ning, ' ' Of course I will. Where the capital D 
is Bogota?" Mr. Izard never found out 
where Tuscany was, but spent some years in 
Paris in geographical studies. He was at 
Franklin's, one evening, in the company I 
have mentioned, and said sneeringly, ''Why 
could n't we have some of the gentlemen of 
France?" What a faithful forerunner of 
Preston Brooks!— except that slavery had 
seventy-five years longer to elaborate 
Brooks, and so produced a more finished 
work. 

It is needless to say that the adulation 
which Franklin received did not injure him. 
Honest praise never hurt any one. It is only 
men who are meanly flattered that are ruined 
by it. He went energetically about his work. 

22 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

For a year his position as envoy was unrec- 
ognized by the court, but none the less the 
French government paid the greatest defer- 
ence to his representations. Frequent Sittings 
to and from Versailles to Passy; numerous 
mysterious interviews in Franklin's library 
with M. Gerard of the Foreign Office (after- 
ward minister to the United States), usually 
ending in a fresh shipment of arms to Amer- 
ica by the sympathetic firm of Hortalez & Co., 
or a replenishing of the exhausted exchequer 
of the colonies. The mystery which hung 
about the firm of Hortalez & Co. has never 
been wholly cleared; though now it appears 
that Beaumarchais— the immortal creator of 
Figaro— was Hortalez, Beaumarchais was 
the company and the shareholders and the 
board of directors of that public-spirited firm. 
The French government seems to have been 
the rock from which, on Franklin's periodical 
smiting, gushed forth the streams that kept 
the mill of Hortalez in motion. But the se- 
crecy necessary to throw dust in the wide- 
awake eyes of the English ambassador was in 
the end the cause of woes unnumbered to 
Beaumarchais. He lived to appreciate in 

23 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

bankruptcy and ruin the serpent-toothed in- 
gratitude of two republics. 

The French government, true to the ruin- 
ous policy of that day, omitted no effort to 
cripple England by secretly aiding the colo- 
nies; but while the issue of the war remained 
doubtful, they held aloof from open alliance. 
The position of our diplomacy abroad seemed 
almost hopeless at one moment, when Lord 
Howe was in Philadelphia and a clever young 
officer named Andre was quartered in Frank- 
lin's house, amusing himself with the philos- 
opher's electrical apparatus, and contenting 
himself, for all loot on departing, with the 
sage's picture. 

It may amuse some of you who were made 
merry by Mr. Seward 's famous sixty days ' re- 
prieves to our late rebellion, to know that 
Franklin used in Paris a thousand times the 
same expressions as those by which the sage 
of Auburn quieted from time to time the semi- 
rebel diplomatic corps at Washington. He 
never lost heart, however gloomy the situa- 
tion. He called our disasters blessings in 
disguise, and when asked one day if Howe had 
really captured Philadelphia, he answered, 
"No. Philadelphia has captured Howe." 

24 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

This was the dark hour. But it passed, and 
the first streak of day was the news of the 
surrender of General Burgoyne. The war 
was not half over, but its issue was certain 
from that day. Only the blind obstinacy of 
the King of England could have protracted 
it to such brutal and bloody lengths. The 
French Jupiter saw that the Yankee wagoner 
was himself getting out of the mire, and so 
concluded to give him a serious lift. The 
treaties of alliance and of amity and com- 
merce between France and the United States 
were signed on February 6, 1778. 

It was the sunburst to the colonies after a 
troubled dawn. The tattered and frost-bitten 
soldiers of Valley Forge were paraded to re- 
ceive the joyful news, and the army of the re- 
public shouted, "Long live the King of 
France!" Washington issued a general or- 
der saying it had ''pleased the Almighty 
Ruler of the universe propitiously to defend 
the cause of the United American States, and 
by finally raising up a powerful friend among 
the nations of the earth to establish our lib- 
erty and independence upon a lasting founda- 
tion." The act of France gave us a standing 
abroad which we had hitherto lacked. A 

25 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

man 's character is made by himself ; his repu- 
tation exists in the minds of others. Our 
Declaration asserted our independence, the 
French alliance proved it. Even before 1776 
we were a nation; but until our treaties with 
France the world regarded us as a rebellion. 
This first great act of our diplomacy was 
as dignified in form as it was valuable in 
substance. The struggling transatlantic re- 
volt met the proudest monarchy of Europe on 
terms of absolute equality. By a strange 
equation of prophecy, the negotiators seemed 
to recognize the possibilities of the crescent 
republic and the waning dynasty. ' ' There shall 
be a firm, inviolable, and universal peace and 
a true and sincere friendship between the 
Most Christian King, his heirs and succes- 
sors, and the United States of America." 
There is no note of patronage or subservience 
in these words, nor in these: ''If war should 
break out between France and Great Britain 
during the continuance of the present war be- 
tween the United States and England, his 
Majesty and the said United States shall 
make it a common cause, and aid each other 
mutually with their good offices, their coun- 

26 



FRANKLIN IN FEANCE 

sels, and their forces, according to the exi- 
gence of conjunctures, as becomes good and 
faithful allies. . . . Neither of the two par- 
ties shall conclude either truce or peace with 
Great Britain without the formal consent of 
the other first obtained; and they mutually 
engage not to lay down their arms until the 
independence of the United States shall have 
been formally or tacitly assured by the treaty 
or treaties that shall terminate the war." 

The effect of the treaty was immediate and 
most important. Even before it was made 
public, the rumor of it powerfully affected the 
courts of the world. Lord North introduced 
into the House of Commons proposals for 
conciliation which, if they had been presented 
in time, would have been gladly accepted by 
the colonies; but the water had passed by the 
mill. The American Congress promptly re- 
jected these belated propositions. The British 
ambassador quitted Paris in justifiable anger ; 
war ensued between England and France. On 
February 13, 1778, in the harbor of Brest, 
Paul Jones, in the Ranger, had the satisfac- 
tion of seeing the American flag saluted for 
the first time by the guns of a foreign power. 

27 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

The American navy was born and entered at 
once on its career of glory. The battle under 
the starlight between the Bonhomme Richard 
and the Serapis set a standard of heroism 
which may always be emulated but never ex- 
celled. In the summer of July, 1778, a stately 
fleet, under Count d'Estaing, brought to 
America the first French minister and four 
thousand troops. Spain joined France 
against England, through no sympathy with 
the colonies, but in pursuance of her Euro- 
pean policy. And the final harvest of the 
French alliance was gathered in the crowning 
victory at Yorktown. 

More than a year before, Franklin had been 
received with joyous enthusiasm by the 
people of France— for the French people had 
already come into existence. Now the court 
was to have the privilege of knowing him. 
Immediately after the signing of the treaty, 
he was presented at Versailles and took the 
palace by storm. One of those trifling chron- 
iclers so dear to the readers of history tells 
us that he went without the flowing wig re- 
quired by the full dress of those days. It 
was not an act of audacity, but a lucky acci- 

28 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

dent. There was not a wig in Paris large 
enough to harbor the great brain of the phi- 
losopher. A perruquier had brought him a 
wig on that memorable morning, and, after 
repeated efforts to put it on, dashed it 
angrily to the floor. "Is the wig too small?" 
asked the placid doctor. ''No, monsieur; 
your head is too big!" roared the disgusted 
artist. So it came that Franklin went to court 
in the majesty of his own silver hair. 

Franklin wore, when presented to the most 
brilliant court of Christendom, a full suit of 
plain black velvet, white ruffles at wrist and 
bosom, white-silk stockings, and silver buck- 
les—the dress that the world is familiar with 
in Stuart's great revolutionary portraits. 
This was perhaps the first time, since heralds 
first went on embassies, that an envoy ap- 
proached a sovereign in his own every-day 
garb. 

Franklin was received in the dressing- 
room of the King. The monarch "had his 
hair, undressed, hanging down on his shoul- 
ders—no appearance of preparation to receive 
the Americans, no ceremony in doing it." 
There have not been, since embassies and al- 

29 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

liances and wars were invented, many more im- 
portant interviews than this, and a man must 
have the soul of a milliner if he thinks that 
the simplicity of this international greeting 
detracts anything from its dignity. For my 
part, I am pleased to think of this fine tableau 
of the perfect Pallas birth of American di- 
plomacy displayed in the strong light of that 
historic day: the contrasted figures of the 
good, weak Louis and the great, wise Ben- 
jamin, greeting so simply, where the Repub- 
lican paid conventional homage to the King, 
but where in reality the dying Past stood in 
the large presence of the great free Future. 

Franklin became the fashion of the season. 
For the court itself dabbled a little in liberal 
ideas. So powerful was the vast impulse of 
free thought that then influenced the mind of 
France,— that susceptible French mind that 
always answers like the wind-harp to the breath 
of every true human aspiration,— that even 
the highest classes had caught the infection 
of liberalism. They handled the momentous 
words Liberty and Human Rights in their 
dainty way, as if they were only a new game 
for their amusement, not knowing what was 

30 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

to them the terrible import of those words. 
It became very much the accepted thing at 
court to rave about Franklin. The young and 
lovely Queen, Marie Antoinette, was most 
winning and gracious toward him. The lan- 
guid courtiers crammed natural science to 
talk with him. The small wits who knew a 
little Greek called him Solon and Aristides 
and Phocion. It is sad to think of the utter 
unconsciousness of these amiable aristocrats. 
They never dreamed that this man Franklin 
was a portent and a prophet of ruin to them. 
He was incarnate Democracy, and they pet- 
ted him! They never imagined that in 
showering their good-natured homage upon 
this austere republican they were sowing the 
wind which would ripen in an awful harvest 
of whirlwinds. Later, when the whirlwinds 
had hardly got beyond the frisky stage of 
their development, the Queen lamented bit- 
terly the folly of these ovations to the great 
democrat. There was one sagacious head 
that was wisely shaken over these indiscre- 
tions while they lasted. Joseph II, Emperor 
of Austria, brother to the Queen, who was in 
Paris on his travels, and who was as much of 

31 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

a democrat himself as an emperor can be, 
wlion his sister rebuked his coohiess on the 
American question, replied, "Madam, the 
trade I live by is that of a royalist." 

Court incense could not turn the philo- 
sophic head any more than the loud acclaim 
of the people. When Franklin found himself 
the honored guest of royalty, his thoughts 
reverted to those far-away days of boyhood 
when his father used to quote to him, in the 
old caudle-shop at Boston, the words of the 
wise maji, ''Seest thou a man diligent in his 
business? he shall stand before kings." The 
old sage heard the echo of that paternal voice 
resounding over half a centur^^ and a new 
and strange light, as of prophecy fulfilled, il- 
luiniiuHl the immortal words. Surely no 
man ever lived more diligent in his business. 
Surely no man ever stood, with more of the 
innate dignity of upright manhood, before 
kings. 

It was in this year of 1778 that Voltaire re- 
turned to Paris after an exile of thirty-seven 
years. It was like a visit to posterity. The 
France he had left existed no more. A new 
France, with a people and a public opinion, 

32 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

had come into the world, as bright, as criti- 
cal, as aspiring as his own turbulent youth 
had been. The old man coming from the 
tranquil shades of Ferney, where he had 
dwelt for many years, still as his shadow, was 
dazed and bewildered by this fresh and vivid 
life, by this quick intellectual movement, this 
fervid homage of an intelligent people who 
had been born since he was young. He had 
lived so long that he had gained the unques- 
tioning reverence due to the consecrated past. 
He breathed the sweet but deadly incense of 
posthumous fame. He was smothered under 
immortelles. 

But before his frail life went out in the 
gale of popular adoration, he and Franklin 
met several times. At the first interview he 
laid his shadowy hands upon the head of 
Franklin's grandson and blessed him in the 
name of God and liberty. They met again 
on the platform of the French Academy. The 
crowd caught sight of the two patriarchs and 
clamorously roared that they should embrace, 
"a la frangaise." The two venerable men 
rose, approached, and kissed each other, to 
the wild delight of the entire vast assembly. 

' 33 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

Rarely has a stranger contrast been seen in 
the world than when these two great geniuses 
clasped hands and kissed before that shout- 
ing people. They were both old men. But 
Voltaire belonged to a world that was passing 
away, and Franklin to a world just coming 
into being. Voltaire stood in the evening of 
his days, weary with conflict, glad of the com- 
ing rest, his work all behind him, forever. 
Born in the foulest days of monarchy, his 
alert and vivid intelligence had gone forth 
like the raven from the ark and had flown 
over the whole wide waste of earth and had 
found no green or healthful thing in church, 
or state, or society. Everywhere unpitied 
suffering and unpunished crime, the cry of 
the desolate going up forever unheard. 
Whatever was, was wrong, and he armed his 
spirit for indiscriminate war. The work of 
his marvelously laborious life was therefore 
almost purely destructive. The ruins of the 
systems he had helped demolish were his 
only monument. To what better destinies 
was Franklin born! He came to the light 
among the stern. God-fearing Puritans. He 
grew up in a society whose virtues, say what 

34 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

you will, are as yet unequaled in history, and 
whose faults were those of earnest men. In 
dewy freshness and freedom as of the pri- 
meval morning, he and his great coadjutors 
began their beneficent work. They had noth- 
ing to destroy. Their godlike mission was 
to create. A struggle with outside resistance, 
and the mighty work was accomplished. 
Each effort of Franklin's life for the ad- 
vancement of freedom and science had been 
founded on faith in God, from which springs 
belief in the innate goodness of man, and per- 
fection of nature. God is good. His works 
are good. Doing good is doing his will, 
and is best. So, as he saw the shadows 
of the coming night grow long about his 
path, he could hope that, though he might 
pass away, his work would never perish. The 
torch he had lighted would pass from hand 
to hand down the ages. His labor would not 
be in vain as long as the lightning lived in the 
cloud or the thought of freedom in the mind 
of man. 

This is the lesson we draw from this 
strange greeting of Franklin and Voltaire: 
to teach is better than to deny, to love and 

35 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

trust is wiser than to hate and doubt, to 
create is nobler than to destroy. 

I have spared you many details of the dip- 
lomatic work of Franklin in these eventful 
years. You care only for results, and those 
you all know. Franklin, by the mere force 
of his personal character, obtained such in- 
fluence with the French government that he 
rarely asked for anything that was not 
readily granted. He obtained from France 
the fleet of De Grasse and the army of Ro- 
chambeau. But, what was of vastly more im- 
portance, he obtained those timely grants of 
money from Versailles that saved us and 
helped ''to bleed the French monarchy to 
death." And he kept the hands of the govern- 
ment from the heroic Paul Jones, and en- 
abled him to inaugurate our naval history 
with a burst of glory amid which his dandy 
figure already stands half mythical in the 
light of his apparently impossible exploits. 
And finally he lent his masterly hand to the 
framing of the Treatj'" of Paris, by which 
drums were silenced and flags furled over the 
globe, and the United States took "the place 
among the nations of the earth to which the 

36 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

laws of nature and of nature's God entitled 
them. ' ' 

His work abroad was over, and he begged to 
be permitted to return to the land he had so 
nobly served. But it was only in the spring of 
1785 that Congress passed their resolution 
allowing the Hon. B. Franklin, Esq., to return 
to America and appointing the Hon. Thomas 
Jefferson, Esq., in his stead. 

Franklin's journey from Paris to the sea- 
shore was one long festival. At the consider- 
able towns which he passed the authorities 
received him with public honors and the great 
nobles disputed the privilege of entertaining 
him at their chateaux. It was not a repub- 
lican demonstration. The old regime hon- 
ored itself in its last days in nothing more 
than in its cordial appreciation of this artisan- 
philosopher. 

This may have been one reason why Frank- 
lin, one of the most sagacious observers that 
ever lived, had apparently no clear percep- 
tion of the tremendous change that was im- 
minent in France. He heard in the court 
circles dilettante ideas of liberty discussed. 
The King was trying to redress in his in- 

37 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

efficient way the deep-rooted wrongs of ages. 
There was a kind of false philanthropy in 
fashion. There was a specious show of revival 
of trade and commerce. There ivere two men 
at court— an old and a young man— who rep- 
resented the new time, the vast and earnest 
future, but Franklin never seemed to recog- 
nize the significance of their attitude. For 
one of these men was himself and the other 
was Lafayette. He had returned from Amer- 
ica matured by varied experience, educated 
by intercourse with the immortal rebels, per- 
fectly attuned to the strange and swelling 
music of the age. He stood alone, calm and 
severe amid the gay crowd of courtiers, a 
chivalrous stoic among the amiable epicures 
of the decadence, at once a protest and a 
prophecy. A^Tiile Franklin lived in Paris the 
personages of the dreadful scenes of '93 were 
scattered quietly over France, waiting for 
destiny to give their cue. Mirabeau he often 
entertained at Passy, for the wild young rake 
always loved letters and felt at home with 
philosophers. Danton was a broad-shoul- 
dered, briefless barrister, unknown out of the 
Latin Quarter. Robespierre was copying 

38 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

briefs at Arras, a dreamy enthusiast who 
fainted at the sight of blood. Marat came to 
Franklin one day, looking dirty and disrep- 
utable, with the smell of the Count d'Artois's 
stables about him, and with a scheme to de- 
stroy the British with elementary fire; and 
Charlotte Corday was a sweet little girl, the 
light of a quiet household in Normandy. And 
down in an Italian island, wearing out the 
seat of his trousers on a Corsican school- 
bench, was a moody, olive-complexioned boy 
named Buonaparte, who was to inspire the 
superb free France with so blind and mys- 
terious a passion that she would follow him 
with unflinching adoration through slaughter 
and outrage to the gates of ruin. 

All unconscious of these vivid colors scat- 
tered as yet unrecognizable in the loom of 
fate, Franklin sailed home to receive a wel- 
come full of love and reverence, to be seized 
after scanty repose and put again in harness, 
to cooperate greatly in framing the Constitu- 
tion— ''work not unworthy men who strove 
with gods." Two of the last incidents of his 
life are lovingly remembered. It was he who 
introduced the motion in the Constitutional 

39 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

Convention to open their meetings with 
prayer. His last Public act was to indite from 
his death-bed, as president of the Society for 
the Abolition of Slavery, a noble and touch- 
ing appeal "for those unhappy men who, 
amidst the general joy of surrounding free- 
men, are groaning in servile subjection," in 
which the warm heart of the aged philanthro- 
pist seems united to the unerring conscience 
of the glorified saint. It is fitting that this 
beneficent and symmetrical life should be 
closed with this large utterance of humanity. 
Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, in their 
mature age, scorning the dictates of a vulgar 
prudence, deliberately put on record their 
detestation of this growing crime. They at 
least believed in the words which make the 
Declaration immortal: "All men are created 
equal." I am glad to remember, too, that 
Lincoln, not many days before he went to 
join the august assembly of just men made 
perfect, said to me, "A man who denies to 
other men equality of rights is hardly worthy 
of freedom; but I would give even to Mm all 
the rights which I claim for myself." A plain 
phrase, but all the law and the prophets is 
in it. 

40 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

Franklin died in the night of the 17th of 
April, 1790. It is related that his last glance 
fell upon a picture of Christ on the cross. 

It was the first great sorrow of the young 
nation. The people mourned for him. Madi- 
son made a speech of five minutes, and Con- 
gress wore mourning for a month— extraor- 
dinary honors in those days, from which we 
have somewhat worn the gloss since then. 

The news reached France in June. The 
titanic games had begun. The mighty throes 
by which a nation was born were darting 
through the convulsed frame of society. The 
unchained Revolution, on which many had 
built absurd and fantastic hopes, was nearing 
that stage where many sank into equally ab- 
surd and fantastic despairs. Mirabeau was 
then the rugged and sparkling crest of the 
topmost wave. It was his clarion voice that 
announced to the National Assembly the 
death of the statesman and philosopher of 
two worlds, and sank into the wailing notes 
of a dirge as he recounted his virtues and 
glory. The delicate and sympathetic heart of 
France responded in a demonstration unique 
in the world's history. The Assembly and the 
nation turned for a time from their stupen- 

41 



FRANKLIN IN FRANCE 

dous work to pay due honors to this alien 
tradesman. The hurricane stopped short in 
mid-career to waft a breath of tender regret 
to the grave of a citizen, growing green in the 
dewy hush of sunset a thousand leagues 
away. 



42 



OMAE KHAYYAM 

ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE DINNER OF THE 
OMAR KHAYYAM CLUB, LONDON, DECEMBER 8th, 
1897. MR. HAY WAS THE GUEST OF THE CLUB. 



OMAR KHAYYAM 



I CANNOT sufficiently thank you for the high 
and unmerited honor you have done me 
to-night. I feel keenly that on such an occa- 
sion, with such company, my place is below the 
salt; but as you kindly invited me, it was not 
in human nature for me to refuse. 

Although in knowledge and comprehension 
of the two great poets whom you are met to 
commemorate I am the least among you, there 
is no one who regards them with greater ad- 
miration, or reads them with more enjoyment, 
than myself. I can never forget my emotions 
when I first saw FitzGerald's translations of 
the Quatrains. Keats, in his sublime ode on 
Chapman's Homer, has described the sensa- 
tion once for all : 

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken. 

45 



OMAR KHAYYAM 

The exquisite beauty, the faultless form, the 
singular grace of those amazing stanzas were 
not more wonderful than the depth and breadth 
of their profound philosophy, their knowledge 
of life, their dauntless courage, their serene 
facing of the ultimate problems of life and of 
death. Of course the doubt did not spare me, 
which has assailed many as ignorant as I was 
of the literature of the East, whether it was the 
poet or his translator to whom was due this 
splendid result. Was it, in fact, a reproduction 
of an antique song, or a mystification of a great 
modern, careless of fame and scornful of his 
time ? Could it be possible that in the eleventh 
century, so far away as Khorassan, so accom- 
plished a man of letters lived, with such dis- 
tinction, such breadth, such insight, such calm 
disillusion, such cheerful and jocund despair? 
Was this Weltschmerz, which we thought a 
malady of our day, endemic in Persia in 1100? 
My doubt only lasted till I came upon a literal 
translation of the Eubaiyat, and I saw that not 
the least remarkable quality of FitzGerald's 
poem was its fidelity to the original. In short, 
Omar was a FitzGerald before the letter, or 
FitzGerald was a reincarnation of Omar. 

46 



OMAR KHAYYAM 

It is not to the disadvantage of the later 
poet that he followed so closely in the foot- 
steps of the earlier. A man of extraor- 
dinary genius had appeared in the world ; had 
sung a song of incomparable beauty and 
power in an environment no longer worthy of 
him, in a language of narrow range ; for many 
generations the song was virtually lost; then 
by a miracle of creation, a poet, twin-brother 
in the spirit to the first, was born, who took up 
the forgotten poem and sang it anew with all 
its original melody and force, and with all the 
accumulated refinement of ages of art. It 
seems to me idle to ask which was the greater 
master; each seems greater than his work. 
The song is like an instrument of precious 
workmanship and marvelous tone, which is 
worthless in common hands, but when it falls, 
at long intervals, into the hands of the su- 
preme master, it yields a melody of tran- 
scendent enchantment to all that have ears to 
hear. 

If we look at the sphere of influence of the 
two poets, there is no longer any comparison. 
Omar sang to a half-barbarous province ; Fitz- 
Gerald to the world. Wherever the English 

47 



OMAE KHAYYAM 

speech is spoken or read, the Rubaiyat have 
taken their place as a classic. There is not a 
hill-post in India, nor a village in England, 
where there is not a coterie to whom Omar 
Khayyam is a familiar friend and a bond of 
union. In America he has an equal following, 
in many regions and conditions. In the 
Eastern States his adepts form an esoteric 
set; the beautiful volume of drawings by Mr. 
Vedder is a center of delight and suggestion 
wherever it exists. In the cities of the West 
you will find the Quatrains one of the most 
thoroughly read books in every club library. 
I heard them quoted once in one of the most 
lonely and desolate spots of the high Rockies. 
We had been camping on the Great Divide, 
our ''roof of the world," where in the space 
of a few feet you may see two springs, one 
sending its waters to the Polar solitudes, 
the other to the eternal Carib summer. One 
morning at sunrise, as we were breaking 
camp, I was startled to hear one of our party, 
a frontiersman born, intoning these words of 
somber majesty: 

'T is but a tent where takes his one day's rest 
A Sultan to the realm of death addrest; 

48 



OMAR KHAYYAM 

The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash 
Strikes and prepares it for another guest. 

I thought that sublime setting of primeval 
forest and frowning canon was worthy of the 
lines; I am sure the dewless, crystalline air 
never vibrated to strains of more solemn 
music. 

Certainly, our poet can never be numbered 
among the great popular writers of all time. 
He has told no story; he has never unpacked 
his heart in public; he has never thrown the 
reins on the neck of the winged horse, and let 
his imagination carry him where it listed. 
"Oh! the crowd must have emphatic war- 
rant," as Browning sang. Its suffrages are 
not for the cool, collected observer, whose eyes 
no glitter can dazzle, no mist suffuse. The 
many cannot but resent that air of lofty intelli- 
gence, that pale and subtle smile. But he will 
hold a place forever among that limited num- 
ber who, like Lucretius and Epicurus,— with- 
out rage or defiance, even without unbecoming 
mirth,— look deep into the tangled mysteries 
of things ; refuse credence to the absurd, and 
allegiance to arrogant authority; sufficiently 
conscious of fallibility to be tolerant of all 

49 



OMAR KHAYYAM 

opinions; with a faith too wide for doctrine 
and a benevolence untrammeled by creed, too 
wise to be wholly poets, and yet too surely 
poets to be implacably wise. 



50 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

ADDRESS AT UNVEILING OF BUST, WESTMINSTER 
ABBEY, MAY 21st, 1897. 



SIR WALTER SOOTT 



A CLEVER French author made a book 
some years ago called ''The Forty-first 
Armchair." It consists of brief biographies 
of the most famous writers of France, none of 
whom had been members of the Academy. The 
astonishment of a stranger who is told that 
neither Moliere nor Balzac was ever embraced 
among the "Forty Immortals" is very like 
that which has often affected the tourist who, 
searching among the illustrious names and 
faces which make this Abbey glorious, has 
asked in vain for the author of "Waverley." 
It is not that he has ever been forgotten or 
neglected. His lines have gone out through 
all the earth, and his words to the end of the 
world. No face in modern history, if we may 
except the magisterial profile of Napoleon, is 
so well known as the winning, irregular fea- 
tures, dominated by the towering brow, of the 

53 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

** Squire of Abbotsford." It is rather the 
world-wide extent of his fame that has seemed 
hitherto to make it unnecessary that his visible 
image should be shrined here among England's 
writers. His spirit is everywhere; he is re- 
vered wherever the English speech has trav- 
eled, and translations have given some 
glimpses of his brightness through the veil of 
many alien tongues; but the vastness of his 
name is no just reason why it may not have a 
local habitation also. It is therefore most 
fitting that his bust should be placed to-day 
among those of his mighty peers, in this great 
Pantheon of immortal Englishmen. 

In this most significant and interesting 
ceremony I should have no excuse for appear- 
ing, except as representing for the time being 
a large section of Walter Scott's immense con- 
stituency. I doubt if anj-where his writings 
have had a more loving welcome than in Amer- 
ica. The books a boy reads are those most 
ardently admired and the longest remembered ; 
and America reveled in Scott when the coun- 
try was young. I have heard from my father, 
a pioneer of Kentucky', that in the early days 
of this century men would saddle their horses 

54: 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

and ride from all the neighboring counties to 
the principal post-town of the region when a 
new novel by the author of ''Waverley" was 
expected. All over our straggling states and 
territories— in the East, where a civilization 
of slender resources but boundless hopes was 
building; in the West, where the stern conflict 
was going on of the pioneer subduing the con- 
tinent—the books most read were those poems 
of magic and of sentiment, those tales of by- 
gone chivalry and romance, which Walter 
Scott was pouring forth upon the world with a 
rich facility, a sort of joyous fecundity like 
that of Nature in her most genial moods. He 
had no clique of readers, no illuminated sect 
of admirers, to bewilder criticism by excess of 
its own subtlety. In a community engaged in 
the strenuous struggle for empire, whose 
dreams, careless of the past, were turned in the 
clear, broad light of a nation's morning to a 
future of unlimited grandeur and power, there 
was none too sophisticated to appreciate, none 
too lowly to enjoy those marvelous pictures of 
a time gone forever by, pleasing and stimulat- 
ing to a starved fancy in the softened light of 
memory and art, though the times themselves 

55 



81 K WALTER SCOTT 

were imlaiiiented by a people and an age whose 
laces were set toward a far-ditferent future. 

Through all these important formative days 
of the Kepublic, 'Scott was the favorite author 
of Americans, and, while his writings may not 
be said to have had any special weight in our 
material and political development, yet their 
intluence was enormous upon the ta^te and the 
sentiments of a people peculiarly sensitive to 
such intiuences from the very circumstances of 
their environment. The romances of courts 
and castles were specially appreciated in the 
woods and prairies of the frontier, where a 
pure democracy reigneei. The poems and 
novels of Scott, saturated with the glamor of 
legend and tradition, were greedily devoured 
by a people without perspective, conscious that 
they themselves were ancestors of a redoubt- 
able line, whose battle was with the passing 
hour, whose glories were all in the days to 
come. 

Since the time of Scott we have seen many 
fashions in fiction come and go; each genera- 
tion naturally seeks a different expression of 
its exj^>erience and its ideals, but the author of 
* • Waverley, ' * amid all vieissitndes of changing 

56 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

modes, has kept his preeminence in two hemi- 
spheres as the master of imaginative narration. 
Even those of us who make no pretensions to 
the critical faculty may see the twofold reason 
of this enduring masterhood. Both mentally 
and morally Scott was one of the greatest 
writers that ever lived. His mere memory, his 
power of acquiring and retaining serviceable 
facts, was almost inconceivable to ordinary 
men, and his constructive imagination was 
nothing short of prodigious. The lochs and 
hills of Scotland swarm with the imaginary 
phantoms with which he has peopled them for 
all time ; the historical personages of past cen- 
turies are jostled in our memories by the char- 
acters he has created, more vivid in vitality 
and color than the real soldiers and lovers with 
whom he has cast their lives. 

But probably the morality of Scott appeals 
more strongly to the many than even his 
enormous mental powers. His ideals are lofty 
and pure ; his heroes are brave and strong, not 
exempt from human infirmities, but always de- 
voted to ends more or less noble. His heroines, 
whom he frankly asks you to admire, are 
beautiful and true. They walk in womanly 

57 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

dignity through his pages, whether garbed as 
peasants or as princesses, with honest brows 
uplifted, with eyes gentle but fearless, pure in 
heart and delicate in speech ; valor, purity and 
loyalty— these are the essential and undying 
elements of the charm with which this great 
magician has soothed and lulled the weariness 
of the world through three tormented genera- 
tions. For this he has received the uncritical, 
ungrudging love of grateful millions. 

His magic still has power to charm all whole- 
some and candid souls. Although so many 
years have passed since his great heart broke 
in the valiant struggle against evil fortune, his 
poems and his tales are read with undiminished 
interest and perennial pleasure. He loved with 
a simple, straightforward affection man and 
nature, his country and his kind; he has his 
reward in a fame forever fresh and unhack- 
neyed. The poet who as an infant clapped his 
hands and cried ''Bonnie!" to the thunder- 
storm, and whose dying senses were delighted 
by the farewell whisper of the Tweed rippling 
over its pebbles, is quoted in every aspect of 
sun and shadow that varies the face of Scot- 
land. The man who blew so clear a clarion of 

58 



SIR WALTER SCOTT 

patriotism lives forever in the speech of those 
who seek a line to describe the love of country. 
The robust, athletic spirit of his tales of old, 
the loyal quarrels, the instructive loves, the 
stanch devotion of the uncomplicated creations 
of his inexhaustible fancy— all these have their 
special message and attraction for the minds 
of our day, fatigued with problems, with 
doubts and futile questionings. His work is 
a clear, high voice, from a simpler age than 
ours, breathing a song of lofty and unclouded 
purpose, of sincere and powerful passion, to 
which the world, however weary and preoc- 
cupied, must needs still listen and attend. 



59 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE 
AMERICAN SOCIETY IN LONDON 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE 

AMERICAN SOCIETY 

IN LONDON 

FAREWELL BANQUET GIVEN TO MR. AND MRS. BAYARD, 
MAY 7th, 1897. 

I HAVE no suitable words to express my 
appreciation of the most kind and flattering 
language of the Lord Chief Justice, and of the 
amiability with which you have received the 
mention of my name. There is no time to 
develop the thought that the Lord Chief 
Justice has expressed of the duties of an am- 
bassador. I can only say that I adopt his 
words in their entirety, and that the dearest 
wish of my heart is that the happy relations 
now subsisting between the two great nations 
may be not only continued, but, if possible, 
drawn still closer during the time that I shall 
hold the office of ambassador. When your 
chairman kindly invited me to come here this 
evening, and Mr. Bayard added the sanction 
of his own friendly request, I could not deny 

63 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE 

myself the opportunity of passing so delight- 
ful an evening in your company, but I stipu- 
lated that I was to come here not in an official 
capacity, but as an American, temporarily 
resident in London, to add the tribute of my 
regard to your distinguished guest. You will, 
therefore, not expect me to abuse your kind- 
ness by taking any extended part in the even- 
ing's proceedings; but I must express the 
pleasure I feel at being here. 

Mr. Bayard and I— if I may couple great 
things with small— have been cordially op- 
posed to each other all our lives, and I doubt 
not we are still opposed in almost every matter 
of public moment upon which men of good will 
may differ ; but I have always been happy and 
proud of his personal friendship. I have al- 
ways appreciated the dignity, the charm, and 
the grace of his character, and I have shared 
with all his friends the pleasure they took in 
tne unexampled affection and popularity which 
he has conquered in England. There are suc- 
cesses which provoke neither envy nor emula- 
tion. It would be most injudicious for any 
immediate successor of Mr. Bayard to attempt 

64 



AMERICAN SOCIETY IN LONDON 

to rival his brilliant career, or to try to replace 
him in the regard of the British people. Such 
an attempt could end in nothing but disaster. 
None but Ulysses himself could bend the bow 
of Ulysses. I could only rival Mr. Bayard in 
singleness of purpose to preserve intact the 
most friendly relations between the United 
States and England. He will always be re- 
membered as our first Ambassador, and as 
much more than that. He has gained the af- 
fectionate esteem, not only of the Government 
and the governing classes, but of the masses 
of the population in these islands. Since the 
great French Revolution, which brought the 
people forward as the principal factor of 
sovereignty, it has been a fashion of French 
Kings and Emperors to call themselves Emper- 
ors and Kings, not of France, but of the French. 
In like manner it would not be inappropriate to 
speak of Mr. Bayard, not so much as Ambas- 
sador to England, as Ambassador to the 
English. I join you heartily in wishing him 
and his family God-speed, a prosperous voy- 
age, and many years of health and happiness 
at home. 

65 

5 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE 



INDEPENDENCE DAY BANQUET, 
MONDAY, JULY 5th, 1897. 

I AM glad to be here on this slightly dislocated 
Independence Day. The Fourth of July is a 
necessary and wholesome antidote to our 
American yice of modesty. There was a good 
deal of discussion and some agitation among 
the newspapers of America some years ago— 
and there was a good deal less of public inter- 
est in the question— as to what flower could be 
most properly adopted as our national emblem. 
I have forgotten how the discussion was de- 
cided. It probably never was decided at all. 
The great advantage of newspaper discussions 
is that they do not need to be decided. I have 
no doubt as to what the decision ought to have 
been. The national American flower ought to 
be the violet— the emblem of modesty and self- 
effacement. I have never been at a Fourth of 
July meeting of Americans without being im- 
pressed that this quality of modesty might be 
pushed too far. It would be most unwise to 
attempt to change this shrinking and shy char- 
acter of the American people into anything 
that savored of arrogance and self-assertion, 

66 



AMERICAN SOCIETY IN LONDON 

but if there is one day in the year on which we 
might be justified in letting the eagle scream 
a little, it is this day— or the day before. 

Dr. Potter has praised me and Mr. Reid, but 
not a word had been said in praise of Uncle 
Sam ; and yet I think we have a right on a day 
like this to blow our own trumpet a little, or 
—to use the words of Walt Whitman— to 
sound our barbaric yawp over the roofs of the 
world. If this were the time for criticism, 
we might find many little things to censure, but 
let us think how many things we have to rejoice 
over. There is no country in the world, I be- 
lieve, where there is more freedom, more enter- 
prise, more public and private morality, than 
in America. The great historian, Mr. Henry 
Adams, in his admirable history of the earlier 
administrations, says there are two character- 
istics of this new people and this new nation 
which are clear: we are sure to be intelligent, 
and we are sure to be good-natured. Every 
year that has passed of our national existence 
had proved that assertion. We have had few 
quarrels. When we have been forced to fight, 
we have fought without much malice, and al- 
though we have sometimes, perhaps, been less 
soft-spoken than we might have been, yet we 

67 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE 

have practised with reasonable consistency, for 
more than a hundred years, the old-fashioned 
doctrine of ' ' Peace on earth, good will towards 
men." We desire peace and amity with the 
whole world. I need not say how sincerely we 
desire it with that great people whose guests 
we are, and to whom we are bound by so many 
ties. The affection that goes out from our 
hearts to England simply proves that the blood 
in our veins is true to the original spring. The 
unity with England in this year of Jubilee 
shows how near together the two countries are 
in spirit, though sundered by so many leagues 
of the "unsociable sea." We are absolutely at 
one in our appreciation of the great and good 
Sovereign who, in her long and happy reign, 
has shown how compatible are the highest 
qualities of a monarch with the purest virtues 
of private life. Such a reign, however indefi- 
nitely prolonged, can never be too long for 
the happiness of her people. 

THANKSGIVING DAY BANQUET, 
NOVEMBEE 25th, 1897. 

The great body of the peoples of England and 
of the United States are friends. There is, of 
course, no doubt of that— any other relation 

68 



AMERICAN SOCIETY IN LONDON 

would be madness. If there is one class of 
men in either country who more than all others 
appreciate that fact, and the necessity of it, it 
is the great lawyers of America and the great 
lawyers of Great Britain. The reason for this 
is not far to seek. It is to be found in that 
intense respect and reverence for order, lib- 
erty, and law which is so profound a sentiment 
in both countries. Strong as that sentiment 
is in England, it is naturally not less strong in 
America, where we feel ourselves, and are 
grateful to acknowledge, that we are the 
fortunate heirs of English liberty and English 
law. With respect to the national festival of 
thanksgiving, it injures no one. There can 
never be too much gratitude in the world ; and 
seventy millions of voices praising God to- 
gether will not justify the adding of a single 
ironclad to any navy in the world. 

INDEPENDENCE DAY BANQUET, JULY 4th, 1898. 

I SHOULD be much to be commiserated if I were 
expected to say anything new and original in 
proposing the toast which has been confided 
to me. A hundred and twenty-one celebrations 
like this have exhausted the resources of 

69 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE 

eulogy; we must be content to repeat the 
phrases of our fathers. But there are some 
words which never pall upon the ear ; there are 
songs which have gained in melody for cen- 
turies ; and the praise of this day will not seem 
stale to any audience of Americans until the 
nation begins to falter and halt in its triumph- 
ant march of progress. Thank Heaven! it is 
beyond the power of prophecy to foretell that 
day of evil omen to the world. 

To how many people to-day the thought must 
have occurred— how fortune seems to favor 
this day of all days in the year; how history 
seems determined to regild it from time to time, 
consecrating it anew to glory and use. First 
in Philadelphia in 1776 ; then in 1863 a double 
splendor lighted upon it, illuminating a con- 
tinent from Vicksburg to Gettysburg ; and now 
the world is spanned with its brilliancy from 
Santiago to Manila, from the Antilles to the 
Antipodes. 

This year all the omens are with us. The 
presence at this board of so many of the most 
eminent representatives of English life seems 
like a visible sign and symbol of the new amity, 
too long delayed, between the two great 

70 



AMERICAN SOCIETY IN LONDON 

branches of the English-speaking people. For 
many reasons this will be a memorable year; 
for none more than for the lucid recognition, 
by the British and American communities alike, 
of the fact that, reversing the text, the ways of 
pleasantness between them are the ways of 
wisdom, and that variance is mere folly and 
madness. We are glad to think that this is no 
passing emotion, born of a troubled hour; it 
has been growing through many quiet years. 
I am reminded of a little parable. A friend of 
mine, known and honored by all of you, who 
had taken a castle in Scotland, wanted to dis- 
play the British and American flags from its 
topmost tower. But not wishing to give either 
precedence over the other, he had the two flags 
sewed together, so that one side displayed the 
Stars and Stripes and the other the meteor 
flag of England. The combination was rather 
—I will not say heavy, but weighty, and in the 
still days of midsummer it drooped upon the 
staff. But when a breeze came the twin flags 
unfolded the splendor of their colors, and when 
a gale blew they stood stiflfly out to the air, pro- 
claiming their attachment to every quarter of 
the sky. So my friend drew the moral which 

71 



SPEECHES BEFORE THE 

I see you recognize before I utter it. The 
attachment was formed long ago, but it needed 
rough weather to show it to the world. 

Now that the day of clear and cordial under- 
standing has come which so many of us have 
long desired and waited for, may we not hope 
it is to last for ever? It threatens no one; it 
injures no one; its ends are altogether peace- 
ful and beneficent. We shall still compete with 
each other and the rest of the world, but the 
competition will be in the arts and the works 
of civilization, and all the people of good-will 
on the face of the earth will profit by it. 

Whenever I speak on this auspicious day I 
have to brace myself against the temptations 
of saying too much. We do not want to be too 
robustious and f orthputting, especially in the 
presence of these our good friends who have 
been so kind as to share our modest revels. 
But let us never forget, as we think we have a 
right to remember, that this day has been a 
day of good augury to mankind. When all 
allowances are made, all censures duly 
weighed, when we have confessed that there 
are many things among us which need to be 
mended or ended, the fact remains that the 

72 



AMERICAN SOCIETY IN LONDON 

great experiment our forefathers set on foot 
has resulted in enormous good, not only to 
ourselves, but to the world. Even the mighty 
motherland is the richer by the consequences 
of that sharp wrench by which we tore our- 
selves free. We have been preaching for a 
hundred years, not always consistently, not 
always in the best taste or with purest accent, 
a gospel, the tendency of which is for ever to- 
wards the light, and the result of which has 
been the breaking of fetters, the freeing of 
those who sat in darkness, the lifting of cruel 
burdens from the shoulders of the poor. It is 
sometimes said that we exalt this mass to the 
detriment of the individual— but the system 
which in our earliest years gave us a Washing- 
ton and in our later years a Lincoln, is not 
likely to condemn the race to monotonous 
sterility and decay. There are those who think 
that in our keen pursuit of material gain we 
may have lost our pristine loyalty and de- 
votion. But I am old enough to have seen, at 
an insult to the flag, a million peace-loving men 
rushing to arms and crowding ''the road of 
death as to a festival." 
I am not permitted to discuss the events of 
73 



AMEEICAN SOCIETY IN LONDON 

the hour, but I make bold to predict that at any 
time of need the nation will be found as prompt 
and efficient in war, as clement and generous in 
victory, as in those days which a great English 
poet sang about in these splendid lines : 

* Lo ! how fair from afar! 

Blameless in victory stands 
Thy mighty daughter, for years 

Who trod the winepress of war, 
Shines with immaculate hands; 

Slays not a foe, neither fears — 
Stains not peace with a scar. 

The men of our race have never proved 
themselves unworthy of good fortune in the 
hour of success. The nation which ended a 
vast rebellion without an execution or a bill 
of attainder may be trusted always to be 
moderate and magnanimous in victory. I be- 
lieve that when the bitterness of our present 
troubles shall have passed away, both parties 
will be found to have profited by the issue— 
the one by the assertion of a principle which 
will conduce to the peace of the world, and 
the other by the removal of burdens and 
responsibilities which had grown too heavy to 
be borne. 

74 



A PAETNEESHIP IN BENEFICENCE 



SPEECH AT EASTER BANQUET, MANSION HOUSE, LONDON, APRIL 
21st, 1898, IN RESPONSE TO THE LORD MAYOR'S TOAST TO THE AM- 
BASSADORS AND FOREIGN MINISTERS PRESENT ON THIS OCCASION 



A PARTNERSHIP IN 
BENEFICENCE 



I AM honored in having the privilege of 
thanking you, on behalf of all my colleagues 
as well as myself, and the countries which we 
represent, for the cordiality with which this 
toast has been proposed and the kindness with 
which it has been received. In this place, the 
civic heart of London, the home of a traditional 
and princely hospitality, whence from time 
immemorial the only challenge that has gone 
forth has been one inviting the world to that 
wholesome competition in civilizing arts which 
benefits all parties to it, we cannot but accept 
this courtesy in the spirit in which it is ten- 
dered, and in return wish success and prosper- 
ity to England and to British trade and com- 
merce, in the full assurance that all the nations 
of the world will profit more or less directly 
by every extension of British commerce and 
the enterprise and enlightenment that go with 
it hand-in-hand. 

77 



A PARTNEESHIP IN BENEFICENCE 

Perhaps I may be pardoned if I say 
a word about my own country. Knitted 
as we are to the people of Great Britain 
by a thousand ties, of origin, of language, 
and of kindred pursuits, it is inevitable that 
from time to time we should have occasions 
of discussion and even of difference. We hear 
sometimes that we are thought to be somewhat 
eager and pertinacious in the pursuit of our 
own interests. If that is so, I can say, I hope 
with no impertinence, and in a spirit rather of 
pride than of contrition, that it merely goes to 
show of what stock we are. But this truth is 
unquestionable— that for now nearly three 
generations of men there has been peace be- 
tween us and friendly regard, a peace growing 
more solid and durable as years go by, and a 
friendship that I am sure the vast majority of 
both peoples hope and trust is to be eternal. 
The reasons of a good understanding between 
us lie deeper than any considerations of mere 
expediency. All of us who think cannot but 
see that there is a sanction like that of religion 
which binds us to a sort of partnership in the 
beneficent work of the world. Whether we will 
it or not, we are associated in that work by the 

78 



A PARTNERSHIP IN BENEFICENCE 

very nature of things, and no man and no 
group of men can prevent it. We are bound by 
a tie which we did not forge and which we can- 
not break; we are joint ministers of the same 
sacred mission of liberty and progress, charged 
with duties which we cannot evade by the im- 
position of irresistible hands. 

It may be trite and even tedious for me 
to refer again at this distance of time to 
the mighty pageant of last June, but I may 
ask leave to recall one incident of the naval 
review, which will long be remembered by 
those who saw it. On the evening of that 
memorable day, when all the ships lay en- 
shrouded in darkness, the commander of the 
Brooklyn ran up the British and American 
colors, and then at a given signal turned upon 
those two kindred flags the brilliant rays of 
her searchlights. In that high illumination 
shrined in clear radiance far above the ob- 
scurity that hid the engines of destruction and 
preparations for war, those friendly banners 
fluttered, proclaiming to the navies of the 
world their message of good will. The beauty 
of the scene lasted but a moment; it passed 
away with much of the splendor and magnifi- 

79 



A PARTNERSHIP IN BENEFICENCE 

cence that adorned the historic day; but may 
we not hope that the lesson and the inspiration 
of that spectacle may last as long as those 
banners shall float over the seven seas, carry- 
ing always in their shadow freedom and 
civilization ? 



80 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 
OF THE EOYAL SOCIETY 

UNDER THE PRESIDENCY OF LORD LISTER, NOVEMBER 30th, 1897 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 
OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 



I MIGHT begin by pleading the brevity of the 
notice which has been given me of the un- 
deserved honor which lay in wait for me on 
entering these hospitable walls. But as I 
should have been almost equally unprepared, 
no matter what notice I might have received, 
I need not dwell upon this detail. 

I never have been able, I never shall be, to 
speak adequately in this place, or to such a 
company. If I have one qualification, I have 
only one, to appear before you. As the com- 
mission I hold is the sole reason for my being 
invited here, so the only personal aptitude I 
possess, for raising my voice among you, is the 
feeling that I am in harmony with those sen- 
timents of world-wide concord and amity 
which form the dominant note of all that is 

83 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 

ever said when men of science or men of learn- 
ing meet on either shore of the Atlantic. 

I regret I have not even the smattering of 
science which would enable me to put on the 
appearance of saying anything instructive or 
amusing. The only reason why I do not stand 
entirely mute is that I am unwilling by silence 
to seem insensible to the great compliment 
paid me in assigning me to this honorable duty. 

It is in bodies of men like this, onboth sides of 
the sea, in institutions like your own and sim- 
ilar ones of more recent date and narrower 
resources in America, that there exists one of 
the strongest bonds of union among the two 
great branches of our race. They are held to- 
gether by the common love and pursuit of uni- 
versal truth, by devotion to the best interests 
of mankind, by a kindred passion for light and 
progress. These are among the strongest in- 
centives to harmonious action known among 
men. In your pursuits everything unites, 
nothing divides. The results of science are all 
gain and no loss. 

The triumphs of war are bought by tears 
and anguish on both sides; the successes of 
diplomacy and of trade are often attended by 
the discomfiture of one of the parties ; but the 

84 



OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY 

whole world is brightened and made more 
agreeable by the achievements of Morse or 
Faraday; the genius of Lister and of Morton 
diminishes beyond computation the whole vast 
sum of human suffering; and every discovery 
or invention, on either side of the ocean, the 
product of the searching, self-denying scholars 
of our race— Edison or Lord Kelvin, Graham 
Bell or Bessemer, Darwin or Marsh — is at 
once thrown into the common stock of the 
world's intellectual riches, profiting every one 
and injuring none. 

It is for this reason that I— though I have 
no other right to sit among scholars or men of 
science,— since the object of my mission here 
is to do what I can to draw closer the bonds 
that bind together the two Anglo-Saxon 
peoples,— it is for this reason that I am glad 
to come here and to offer my tribute of pro- 
found respect to these eminent men who, under 
the auspices of this venerable Society, are do- 
ing so much to hasten the coming of the day 
when misunderstandings and misconception 
shall fade away in the light of truth and wid- 
ening knowledge, and universal peace ''shall 
lie like a shaft of light across the lands, and 
like a line of beams athwart the sea. ' ' 

85 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 
OF THE LITERARY FUND 



UNDEE THE PEESIDENCY OF THE DUKE OF DEVONSHIRE 
MAY 17th, 1898 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNEK 
OF THE LITERARY FUND 



l^/T Y LOED DUKE, my Lords and Gentle- 
■^» J- men : I have no words to express my grat- 
itude for the courtesy with which Mr. Justice 
Madden has mentioned my name, and the ex- 
treme amiability with which you have received 
it. I had some hesitation in accepting the kind 
invitation of Lord Crewe to come to this dinner. 
My connection with Literature, I knew, had net 
been sufficiently distinguished to entitle me to 
any such invitation. But I remembered the 
principle on which a four-in-hand club was or- 
ganized some years ago in America ; there were 
eligible two classes of the community, those 
who drove four-in-hand, and those who would 
like to if they could. I felt that under some 
such category as the last I might ask to be ad- 
mitted to the company of men of letters, and 
perhaps the fact that one is not to be ranked 

89 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 

amongst the famous writers of the world 
makes him all the freer in speaking of the 
things of the spirit, as in doing so he is not 
magnifying his own office. Though, to do them 
justice, this consideration has not always kept 
the seers and the poets tongue-tied. Horace 
talks of having built for himself a monument 
more lasting than bronze. My old friend Walt 
Whitman delighted in speaking of himself as 
' ' one of the roughs, a Cosmos, a man no more 
modest than immodest." And an Egyptian 
poet, beside whom Horace and Whitman seem 
almost equally modern, has said in the dim 
days before Moses, ' ' To all professions but one 
there is some objection; only the scribe is, 
without question, pre-eminent." And, after 
all, there are some subjects on which exaggera- 
tion is well-nigh impossible, and one of them 
is the masterful influence of the best Litera- 
ture. The mightiest kings reign and die and 
are forgotten, or only their names remain ; but 
great writers have a tenure of power unlimited 
by ages. I read with delight when I was a 
child the late Mr. Kinglake's ''Eothen," and I 
have never forgotten the chapter in which he 
describes himself toiling over wretched roads 

90 



OF THE LITERARY FUND 

to visit a ruined temple of the Paphian Venus. 
Why did he— why do all of us make these 
world-wide pilgrimages to temples and fanes 
which are nothing but crumbling stones and 
broken shards? The gods are gone; they can 
do nothing for us, whatever they once may have 
done, to cure life 's fever and pain. They have 
lost the blessed power of illusion. We go, as 
Kinglake did, because of a verse of Virgil, a 
line of Homer, which has consecrated those 
shrines for ever. As you sail by the coast of 
Sicily it is most likely that you think not so 
much of the stirring events of history of which 
it has been the theatre, as of some verse, some 
phrase of Theocritus which has made it an 
enchanted land. The fascinations of Cleopatra 
live more surely in the lines of Shakespeare 
than in the sculpture and paintings on the mas- 
sive walls of Denderah. 

There is no term, no date to really great Lit- 
erature. The Book of Job comes home to our 
hearts as though it were written yesterday. 
Even when the works of the master singers 
are gone and have perished from men's mem- 
ory, their fame lives on for countless ages like 
the life of the spirit when the body is dust. We 

91 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 

need no poems of Sappho to be sure that she 
was one of the greatest of poets. It must be 
confessed that it is only among the firstborn 
of genius that we may expect this immortal 
royalty. For the common run of us, we can 
adopt the sad sincerity of the remark of Mr. 
Howells, when, speaking about that pathetic 
complaint so common among young writers, 
of the oblivion which is to overtake them here- 
after, he says, ''We do not dream, in our in- 
nocence, of that shoreless sea of oblivion in 
which we welter all our lives. ' ' In such a com- 
pany as this, I hesitate to hint at the mortality 
of literary fame. I might borrow a leaf from 
the book of a French clergyman who was 
preaching before Louis XV. He had been told 
that the king was not pleased at any reference 
to his latter end; but, carried away by the 
fervor of his discourse, he was so unlucky as 
to say, "Brethren, we must all die," then, re- 
membering the august presence in which he 
stood, he added, ' ' at least, most of us. " I think 
I may go that far even here. 

But whatever our rank in the hierarchy, 
whatever our span of existence, the glory of 
the writer, in which the highest as well as the 

92 



OF THE LITERARY FUND 

lowest may share, is that in his art there is 
something which transcends the ordinary laws 
of demand and supply. The most considerable 
efforts of genius have been either ill-paid or 
not paid at all. The most eminent philosophers 
and historians, from the time of Aristotle and 
Thucydides down to our own days, have re- 
garded very little, if at all, the material gain 
of their work. If there had been no such thing 
as money in the world, "Lycidas" and ''In 
Memoriam" would have been written all the 
same. Keats and Shelley, had they been pau- 
pers or millionaires, would still have given 
forth those immortal notes, twin Memnons 
smitten by the morning light. The worst-paid 
poet in America produced the most exquisite 
lyrics to which our country has given birth. 
Edgar Poe received with pathetic gratitude 
the few dollars which were grudgingly doled 
out to him for those masterpieces of a melody 
so fine and magical that they seem like music 
heard in dreams. A new song by Bums would 
be worth how many guineas? But all the 
guineas in Threadneedle Street will not give 
us another. Unquestionably, the amount of the 
literary product is increased by just and 

93 



SPEECH AT THE ANNUAL DINNER 

proper compensation. The quantity of Litera- 
ture produced can be augmented by money, 
but quality is beyond the power of gold. 

We hear it sometimes said that the gods are 
vanished and that only the half-gods remain. 
It cannot be denied that on both sides of the 
Atlantic a great constellation of stars has left 
the heavens all at once. Perhaps we are to 
pass through an hour or two of dubious twi- 
light, but even if this condition is admitted, this 
Dichterdaemmerung, we cannot forget that the 
twilight is a phase of the dawn as well as of 
the night. Literature can never perish from 
the earth, and English Literature, like the 
British Empire, can never be wholly swallowed 
up in darkness. Somewhere, always, in that 
immense expanse the sun will be shining. Even 
if your soil should lie fallow in the Metropolis 
for a time, at the ends of the earth there will be 
fecundity and bloom. Even if the tuneful choir 
should rest for a few bars in England— of 
which, I am bound to say, I see no sign what- 
ever,— the English lark, though he spring from 
Canadian meadows or the Indian jungle, will 
still be heard singing at Heaven's gate. I do 
not speak of my own people, because I have no 

94 



OF THE LITERARY FUND 

time to enumerate the young writers who, be- 
yond the sea, are beginning to flame in the 
forehead of the morning sky. It is, therefore, 
with no spirit of pessimism, no looking back- 
ward with despair to the great departed who 
were my contemporaries, but forward, with the 
brightest hope, the fullest confidence, to the 
vast future, that I welcome, and give thanks 
for, the old and ever new toast of Literature. 



95 



SPEECH AT THE OPENING, 

BY MISS HELEN HAY, OF THE 

EOBERT BROWNING GARDEN 

YORK STREET, WALWORTH, LONDON, JUNE 13th, 1898 



SPEECH AT THE OPENING, 
BY MISS HELEN HAY, OF THE 
ROBERT BROWNING GARDEN 



I AM sure you will not expect me to make a 
speech this evening. I came merely to pay 
my homage to the illustrious memory of Brown- 
ing and my tribute of respect to the excellent 
work which is going on here in his name. It 
seems to me that nothing could be more appro- 
priate ; the name of Browning stands as a sym- 
bol of intellectual energy and moral earnest- 
ness and is most fittingly used in any effort to 
uplift and enlighten men. Especially is it an 
appropriate symbol in all attempts to benefit 
the people; for though he unquestionably be- 
longed to the great aristocracy of genius and 
character, there never was a more uncompro- 
mising democrat in the essential, underlying 
principles of true democracy. To him all men 
were equal in the sight of God. He believed 

99 



SPEECH AT THE OPENING OF 

in equality of rights, equality of opportunity, 
equality in the individual sacredness of soul 
of every man and every woman. And the first 
of all rights— the right to the light— he always 
upheld and vindicated with all the power of 
his wonderful poetry and the example of his 
blameless life. 

This is the spirit which breathes through all 
his work, beginning with the "veined human- 
ity " of " Bells and Pomegranates, ' * developing 
in fullness and splendor through all the stately 
procession of his songs, to reach that noble 
climax of music and color and radiance which 
finally charmed and conquered the world in 
' ' Men and Women. ' ' From beginning to end, 
from youth through glorious manhood to 
serene old age, his lyre was always true to 
the one unfaltering tone, which taught the 
innate dignity of human nature,— its right al- 
ways to learn, always to aspire. 

We may be sure, therefore, that this most 
laudable effort to keep alight in this the most 
densely-populated region of London the torch 
of moral and intellectual culture is one of the 
things he would heartily have commended 
while living, and upon which his glorified 

100 



THE ROBERT BROWNING GARDEN 

spirit, if it were permitted to revisit the scenes 
of his earthly pilgrimage, would be certain 
to look with lofty and benignant approval. 

I wish to say nothing more except to thank 
you from the bottom of my heart, on my own 
behalf and that of my daughter, for the most 
amiable and kindly way in which you have re- 
ceived us, and for the pleasure we have en- 
joyed in being with you this evening, and most 
of all for the kindly and cordial words of sym- 
pathy with our country which we have heard 
not only from the speakers but from this au- 
dience. You may be sure that no words of 
goodwill however strong, however enthusias- 
tic, can be uttered in England that will not find 
instant and adequate response on the other 
side of the Atlantic. For myself, of whom you 
have spoken but too kindly, I can only say 
that a frank and warm friendship with Eng- 
land has been one of the passions of my life. 
The hope of it I have cherished ever since I 
knew anything, and I am glad that I have lived 
long enough to see the dawn of it upon the 
horizon. 



101 



INTEENATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

LETTER TO THE POET LAUHEATE 



INTERNATIONAL 
COPYRIGHT 

Department of State 

Washington, May 23, 1899. 

MY DEAR MR. AUSTIN : I owe you many 
apologies for my delay in answering 
your letter, of which I am ashamed to give the 
date. I think you would pardon me if you 
knew how my time has been occupied. Even 
now I shall not attempt to write a letter like 
yours. Long before it reached my hands it 
had been read with enjoyment wherever there 
are readers who care for good thoughts ex- 
pressed in perfect English. I cannot vie with 
you in such a competition. Nor can I discuss 
the subject of copyright with any such author- 
ity as you possess. The laurel you bear makes 
you the dean of contemporary English litera- 
ture. My place in the world of letters is too 
inconsiderable to give me any title to speak for 
105 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

American authors, and the post I hold for the 
moment in the Government not only confers 
no power over legislation, but even restricts to 
some extent that liberty of criticism and sug- 
gestion which would be my right as a private 
citizen. 

I am, however, as you assume, greatly in- 
terested in the subject of international copy- 
right. I sympathized, and, to the extent of my 
ability, co-operated with the efforts of men 
more energetic and capable than myself to re- 
form our objectionable copyright system and 
to have the present arrangement enacted into 
law. I think you do something less than justice 
to the law itself and to the Congress that en- 
acted it. There were many interests opposed 
to it, and it required no little patience and care 
to bring together the different groups of 
opinion favorable to the principle involved. 
The law as passed was not what everybody 
wanted, but it was the only settlement within 
reach, and it was in itself, I venture to say, if 
not perfect in all its provisions, a most laudable 
and beneficent act. Its good effects have sur- 
passed the expectations of its friends. 

From inquiries I have recently made I am 
106 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

led to believe that the operation of the law has 
not profited American publishers to anything 
like the extent they anticipated, and while it 
has certainly been an advantage to American 
authors, they have not been its chief bene- 
ficiaries. English writers have profited largely 
by the protection afforded them, and English 
publishers have reaped great advantage by 
establishing branch offices in this country, 
which have enabled them to handle their 
English business at inconsiderable expense 
and to extend their profitable operations here. 
It is not in its application to pure literature 
alone that our law of copyright ought to be 
judged. In the department of art it affords 
absolutely perfect security to producers, all 
rights in paintings, etchings, drawings, sculp- 
ture and architectural plans being reserved by 
simple registry at a nominal fee. The same 
is true of musical works of all sorts. Recent 
legal decisions have taken the highest ground, 
following the purpose of the framers of the 
law, in affording to music the most liberal pro- 
tection. Dramatic works also receive the most 
ample security. They are better protected, I 
am informed, than even in England. 
107 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

It is in the matter of the manufacture of 
books alone that the complaint of the English 
author is founded, and I cannot but think that 
the hardshijDs which are alleged to proceed 
from this source are somewhat exaggerated. 
The operation of the law has been in the main 
of enormous value to English authors, both in 
their financial returns and the spread of their 
fame and influence. In many cases the prices 
of literary work under the action of the law 
have more than doubled. The world of English 
letters was never so prosperous as now. The 
hardship of compelling the manufacture of 
English books in America has greatly de- 
creased with the constantly diminishing cost of 
the work, and where a book impresses a pub- 
lisher as worthy his attention the question of 
the outlay for printing is hardly regarded. 
Where such a book has not seemed of sufficient 
value to be reprinted here, the author has, of 
course, been free to import a foreign edition, 
but I am told there has not been an instance in 
which this has operated disadvantageously to 
a later edition of the work or to the author's 
next book. 

The growth of respect for literary property 
108 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

has always been proportionate to the familiar- 
ity with literary exchange, and since the pas- 
sage of our law the security conferred upon 
many people formerly indifferent to the sub- 
ject has created for the copyright law a body 
of new supporters. It is a great advantage to 
feel that no backward step will be taken, and 
the almost unanimous voice of American men 
of letters, including the entire league of Amer- 
ican authors and not a few of our most prom- 
inent publishers, is in cordial sympathy with 
your own lofty and generous aspiration for the 
absolute freedom of literary exchange through- 
out the world. 

I know you will pardon the inadequacy of 
this reply to your most gracious and magnan- 
imous letter, and let me say in conclusion with 
what sincere cordiality I welcome and return 
your expressions of good will. Your genial 
words have found only sjTupathetic echoes 
throughout this country. We are, and from 
the nature of the case must always be, keen 
competitors in the work of the world, but, what- 
ever details may intervene of political or com- 
mercial rivalry, the blood in our veins, the 
history in our memories, must always make us 
109 



INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT 

yoke-fellows in the weighty tasks laid upon us 
which make for civilization and for right- 
eousness. 

Believe me, my dear Mr. Austin, with happy 
memories of our last meeting, and pleasant 
anticipations of the next, faithfully yours, 

John Hay. 



110 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

SPEECH IN REPLY TO THE TOAST OF " OUR RECENT DIPLOMACY ' 

AT NEW YORK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE DINNER 

NOVEMBER 19th, 1901 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 



I NEED not dwell upon the mournful and 
tragic event by virtue of which I am here. 
When the President lay stricken in Buffalo, 
though hope beat high in all our hearts that 
his life might be spared for future usefulness 
to his country, it was still recognized as im- 
probable that he should be able to keep the 
engagement he had made to be with you to- 
night, and your committee did me the honor to 
ask me to come in his place. This I have some- 
times done, in his lifetime, though always with 
diffidence and dread; but how much more am 
I daunted by the duty of appearing before you 
when that great man, loved and revered above 
all even while living, has put on the august halo 
of immortality ! Who could worthily come into 
your presence as the shadow of that illustrious 
Shade! 

« 113 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

Let me advert, but for a moment, to one 
aspect of our recent bereavement, which is 
especially interesting to those engaged, as you 
are, in relations whose scope is as wide as the 
world. Never, since history began, has there 
been an event which so immediately, and so 
deeply, touched the sensibilities of so vast a 
portion of the human race. The sun, which 
set over Lake Erie while the surgeons were 
still battling for the President's life, had not 
risen on the Atlantic before every capital of the 
civilized world was in mourning. And it was 
not from the centers of civilization alone that 
the voices of sorrow and sympathy reached us ; 
they came as well from the utmost limits of the 
world, from the most remote islands of the 
sea ; not only from the courts of Christendom, 
but from the temples of strange gods and the 
homes of exotic religions. Never before has 
the heart of the world throbbed with a sorrow 
so universal. Never before have the kingdoms 
of the earth paid such homage at the grave of 
a citizen. Something of this was naturally due 
to his great office— presiding, as he did, over 
the government of a nation holding in fee the 
certainty of illimitable greatness. But no ruler 
114 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

can acquire the instinctive regard and esteem 
of the world without possessing most unusual 
qualities of mind and character. This dead 
President of ours possessed them. He was 
strong ; he was wise ; he was gentle. With no 
external advantages beyond the mass of his 
fellow-citizens, he rose by sheer merit and will 
to the summit of distinction and power. With 
a growth as certain and gradual as that of an 
oak, he grew stronger and wiser with every 
year that he lived. Confronted continually 
with new and exacting situations, he was never 
unequal to them; his serenity was never 
clouded; he took the storm and the sunshine 
with the same cheery welcome; his vast in- 
fluence expanded with his opportunities. Like 
that Divine Master whom he humbly and rever- 
ently served, he grew continually "in favor 
with God and man." 

One simple reason why the millions of this 
country mourned him as if they had buried a 
brother, and why all the nations of the earth 
felt that his death was a loss to humanity at 
large, was that he loved his fellow-men. There 
were literally no bounds to his lavish good will. 
In political genius, in wisdom for government, 
115 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

in power of controlling men, he was one of the 
elect of the earth— there were few like him ; but 
in sentiment and feeling he was the most per- 
fect democrat I ever met. He never knew what 
it meant to regard another man as his inferior, 
or as his superior. Nothing human was alien 
to him. Even his death was in that sense 
significant. He was slain in the moment when 
with that delightful smile we knew so well— 
which seemed like the very sunshine of the 
spirit— he was stretching forth a generous hand 
to greet the lowest and meanest unit in that 
crowd of many thousands. He made no dema- 
gogical parade of his sympathy with the 
masses, but this sympathy was a part of his 
life. He knew no interest which was not theirs ; 
their welfare was as dear to him as the blood 
in his own veins ; and in spite of calumny and 
falsehood the people knew it, and they loved 
him in return. 

Others will rise and labor and do good 
service to the Republic. We shall never lack 
good men when the emergency calls for them. 
Thank God ! we do not lack them now. But it 
may well be doubted if in any century of the 
glorious future before us, there will ever ap- 
116 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

pear two such sincere, liigli-minded, self-re- 
specting lovers of the people as the last fifty 
years have shown us in Abraham Lincoln and 
William McKinley. 

But the world must go on, though the great- 
est and best beloved fall by the way. I dare to 
come to you, because you have asked me, and 
he would have wished it, for he held that our 
personal feelings should never be considered 
when they conflicted with a public duty. And 
if I fall immeasurably below the standard to 
which he has accustomed you, the very com- 
parisons you draw will be a tribute to his 
memory. 

I am asked to say something about our diplo- 
macy. You want from me nothing but the 
truth ; and yet, if I confine myself to the truth, 
I can not help fearing I shall do my profession 
a wrong in the minds of those who have been 
in the habit of considering diplomacy an occult 
science, as mysterious as alchemy, and as 
dangerous to the morals as municipal politics. 
It must be admitted that this conception of the 
diplomatic function is not without a certain 
historical foundation. 

There was a time when diplomacy was a 
117 



AMEEICAN DIPLOMACY 

science of intrigue and falsehood, of traps and 
mines and countermines. The word "machia- 
velic" has become an adjective in our common 
speech, signifying fraudulent craft and guile; 
but Machiavel was as honest a man as his time 
justified or required. The King of Spain 
wrote to the King of France after the massacre 
of St. Bartholomew congratulating him upon 
the splendid dissimulation with which that 
stroke of policy had been accomplished. In the 
last generation it was thought a remarkable 
advance in straightforward diplomacy when 
Prince Bismarck recognized the advantage of 
telling the truth, even at the risk of misleading 
his adversary. It may be another instance of 
that naif credulity with which I have often been 
charged by European critics when I say that 
I really believe the world has moved onward 
in diplomacy as in many other matters. In my 
experience of diplomatic life, which now covers 
more years than I like to look back upon, and 
in the far greater record of American diplo- 
macy which I have read and studied, I can say 
without hesitation that we have generally told 
squarely what we wanted, announced early in 
negotiation what we were willing to give, and 
118 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

allowed the other side to accept or reject our 
terms. During the time in which I have been 
prominently concerned in our foreign relations, 
I can also say that we have been met by the 
representatives of other powers in the same 
spirit of frankness and sincerity. You, as men 
of large affairs, will bear me out in saying 
there is nothing like straightforwardness to 
beget its like. 

The comparative simplicity of our diplo- 
matic methods would be a matter of necessity 
if it were not of choice. Secret treaties, re- 
served clauses, private understandings, are im- 
possible to us. No treaty has any validity until 
ratified by the Senate ; many require the action 
of both Houses of Congress to be carried into 
effect. They must, therefore, be in harmony 
with public opinion. The Executive could not 
change this system, even if he should ever 
desire to. It must be accepted, with all its dif- 
ficulties and all its advantages ; and it has been 
approved by the experience of a hundred years. 

As to the measure of success which our recent 
diplomacy has met with, it is difficult, if not im- 
possible, for me to speak. There are two im- 
portant lines of human endeavor in which men 
119 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

are forbidden even to allude to their success— 
affairs of the heart and diplomatic affairs. In 
doing so, one not only commits a vulgarity 
which transcends all question of taste, but 
makes all future success impossible. For this 
reason, the diplomatic representatives of the 
Government must frequently suifer in silence 
the most outrageous imputations upon their 
patriotism, their intelligence, and their com- 
mon honesty. To justify themselves before the 
public, they would sometimes have to place in 
jeopardy the interests of the nation. They 
must constantly adopt for themselves the 
motto of the French revolutionist, "Let my 
name wither, rather than my country be 
injured. ' ' 

But if we are not permitted to boast of what 
we have done, we can at least say a word 
about what we have tried to do, and the prin- 
ciples which have guided our action. The 
briefest expression of our rule of conduct is, 
perhaps, the Monroe Doctrine and the Golden 
Rule. With this simple chart we can hardly 
go far wrong. 

I think I may say that our sister republics 
to the south of us are perfectly convinced of 
120 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 
the sincerity of our attitude. They know we 
desire the prosperity of each of them, and 
peace and harmony among them. We no more 
want their territory than we covet the moun- 
tains of the moon. We are grieved and dis- 
tressed when there are differences among them, 
but even then we should never think of trying 
to compose any of those differences unless by 
the request of both parties. Not even our 
earnest desire for peace among them will lead 
us to any action which might offend their 
national dignity or their just sense of inde- 
pendence. We owe them all the consideration 
which we claim for ourselves. To critics in 
various climates who have other views of our 
purposes we can only wish fuller information 
and more quiet consciences. 

As to what we have tried to do-what we are 
still trying to do-in the general field of diplo- 
macy, there is no reason for doubt on the one 
hand or reticence on the other. President 
McKinley in his messages during the last four 
■years has made the subject perfectly clear. 
We have striven, on the lines laid down by 
Washington, to cultivate friendly relations 
with all powers, but not to take part in the 
121 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

formation of groups or combinations among 
them. A position of complete independence is 
not incompatible with relations involving not 
friendship alone, but concurrent action as well 
in important emergencies. I We have kept al- 
ways in view the fact that we are preeminently 
a peace-loving people; that our normal activ- 
ities are in the direction of trade and com- 
merce; that the vast development of our 
industries imperatively demands that we shall 
not only retain and confirm our hold on our 
present markets, but seek constantly, by all 
honorable means, to extend our commercial 
interests in every practicable direction. It is 
for this reason we have negotiated the treaties 
of reciprocity which now await the action of 
the Senate ; all of them conceived in the tradi- 
tional American spirit of protection to our 
own industries, and yet mutually advantageous 
to ourselves and our neighbors. In the same 
spirit we have sought, successfully, to induce 
all the great powers to unite in a recognition 
of the general principle of equality of com- 
mercial access and opportunity in the markets 
of the Orient. We believe that ' ' a fair field and 
no favor ' ' is all we require ; and with less than 

122 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

that we can not be satisfied. If we accept the 
assurances we have received as honest and 
genuine, as I certainly do, that equality will not 
be denied us ; and the result may safely be left 
to American genius and energy. 

We consider our interests in the Pacific 
Ocean as great now as those of any other 
power, and destined to indefinite development. 
We have opened our doors to the people of 
Hawaii ; we have accepted the responsibility of 
the Philippines which Providence imposed 
upon us ; we have put an end to the embarras- 
sing condominium in which we were involved 
in Samoa, and while abandoning none of our 
commercial rights in the entire group, we have 
established our flag and our authority in Tu- 
tuila, which gives us the finest harbor in the 
South Seas. Next in order will come a Pacific 
cable, and an isthmian canal for the use of all 
well-disposed peoples, but under exclusive 
American ownership and American control— 
of both of which great enterprises President 
McKinley and President Roosevelt have been 
the energetic and consistent champions. 

Sure as we are of our rights in these mat- 
ters, convinced as we are of the authenticity of 
123 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

the vision which has led us thus far and still 
beckons us forward, I can yet assure you that 
so long as the administration of your affairs 
remains in hands as strong and skillful as 
those to which they have been and are now con- 
fided, there will be no more surrender of our 
rights than there will be violation of the rights 
of others. The President to whom you have 
given your invaluable trust and confidence, like 
his now immortal predecessor, is as incapable 
of bullying a strong power as he is of wronging 
a weak one. He feels and knows— for has he 
not tested it, in the currents of the heady fight, 
as well as in the toilsome work of administra- 
tion?— that the nation over whose destinies he 
presides has a giant's strength in the works of 
war, as in the works of peace. But that con- 
sciousness of strength brings with it no 
temptation to do injury to any power on 
earth, the proudest or the humblest. We 
frankly confess we seek the friendship of all 
the powers ; we want to trade with all peoples ; 
we are conscious of resources that will make 
our commerce a source of advantage to them 
and of profit to ourselves. But no wantonness 
of strength will ever induce us to drive a hard 
124 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 

bargain with another nation because it is weak, 
nor will any fear of ignoble criticism tempt us 
to insult or defy a great power because it is 
strong, or even because it is friendly. 

The attitude of our diplomacy may be in- 
dicated in a text of Scripture which Franklin— 
the first and greatest of our diplomats— tells 
us passed through his mind when he was 
presented at the Court of Versailles. It was a 
text his father used to quote to him in the old 
candle shop in Boston, when he was a boy: 
**Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he 
shall stand before kings." Let us be diligent 
in our business and we shall stand— stand, you 
see, not crawl, nor swagger— stand, as a friend 
and equal, asking nothing, putting up with 
nothing but what is right and just, among our 
peers, in the great democracy of nations. 



125 



A FESTIVAL OF PEACE 

ADDRESS BEFORE THE NATIONAL EDITORIAL ASSOCIATION; 
PAN AMERICAN EXPOSITION, BUFFALO, JUNE 13th, 1901 



A FESTIVAL OF PEACE 



I AST night, as I looked from my window at 
-^ this marvelous creation, lined in fire upon 
the evening sky, and to-day, as I have walked 
through the courts and the palaces of this 
incomparable exhibition, the words of the 
prophet have been constantly in my mind: 
'^Your old men shall dream dreams; your 
young men shall see visions. ' ' We who are old 
have through many hopeful years dreamed this 
dream. It was noble and inspiring, leading to 
earnest and uplifting labor. And now we 
share with you who are young the pleasures of 
beholding the vision, far nobler and more in- 
spiring than the dream. 

This ideal of the brotherhood of the nations 
of the Western World is not a growth of yester- 
day. It was heralded when the country was 
young by the clarion voice of Henry Clay; it 

^ 129 



A FESTIVAL OF PEACE 

was cherished by Seward and Evarts, by- 
Douglas and by Blaine. 

Twelve years ago we held the first reunion 
of the American republics. Much was said 
and done, destined to be memorable in our 
history, opening and blazing the way along 
the path of peace and fraternal relations. We 
have made steady progress; we have grown 
from day to day to a better understanding, un- 
til now we are looking to our coming confer- 
ence in the City of Mexico, in which we have 
the right to hope that with larger experience 
and profounder study of the great problems 
before us results still more important and 
beneficial will be reached. 

As a means to these ends, as a concrete real- 
ization of those generous dreams which have 
led us thus far, we have this grand and beauti- 
ful spectacle, never to be forgotten, a delight 
to the eyes, a comfort to every patriot heart 
that, during the coming summer, shall make 
the joyous pilgrimage to this enchanted scene, 
where lake and shore and sky, the rich, bright 
city throbbing with vigorous life, and in the 
distance the flash and the roar of the stupen- 
dous cataract unite their varied attractions in 
130 



A FESTIVAL OF PEACE 

one charm of powerful magic such as the 
world has seldom seen. 

There have been statesmen and soldiers who 
have cherished the fancy in past years of a 
vast American army recruited from every 
country between the Arctic and the Antarctic 
seas, which should bind us together in one im- 
mense military power that might overawe the 
older civilization. But this conception belongs 
to the past, to an order of things that has gone, 
I hope, forever. How far more inspiring is the 
thought of the results we have here now ! How 
much more in keeping with the better times 
in whose light we live, and the still more 
glorious future to which we look forward, is 
the result we see to-day of the armies of labor 
and intelligence in every country of this New 
World, all working with one mind and one 
will, not to attain an unhappy pre-eminence 
in the art of destruction, but to advance in 
liberal emulation in the arts which tend to 
make this long-harassed and tormented earth 
a brighter and more blest abode for men of 
good will ! 

Our hearts have glowed within us as we have 
surveyed at every turn the evidences of the 
131 



A FESTIVAL OF PEACE 

equality and fraternity of progress under skies 
so distant, under conditions so varying, as 
those which obtain between Alaska, and Cape 
Horn. I remember how, at a World's Fair in 
Paris, a great writer exclaimed: ''What a 
prodigious amount of intelligence there is in 
the world!" We can say, with hearts full of 
gratitude and pride: How prodigious is the 
progress of intelligence and industry in this 
New World of ours! 

All the triumphs of the spirit and of the 
skilled hands of labor, the garnered treasures 
of science, the witcheries of art, the spoils of 
earth and air and sea are gathered here to 
warn, to delight, to encourage and reward the 
ever-striving, the indomitable mind of man. 
Here you have force, which enables men to 
conquer and tame the powers of nature ; wealth, 
not meant, as Tennyson sang, to rest in 
moulded heaps, but smit with the free light to 
melt and fatten lower lands; beauty, not for 
the selfish gratification of the few, but for the 
joy of the many to fill their days with gladness 
and their nights with music; and, hovering 
over all, the sublime, the well-nigh divine con- 
ception of a brotherhood of mutually helpful 
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A FESTIVAL OF PEACE 

nations, fit harbinger and forerunner of a 
brotherhood of man. 

God forbid that there should be in all this 
the slightest hint of vain glory, still less of 
menace to the rest of the world. On the con- 
trary, we cannot but think that this friendly 
challenge we send out to all peoples, convoking 
them also to join in this brotherly emulation, 
in which the prizes are, after all, merely the 
right to further peaceful progress in good 
work, will be to the benefit and profit of every 
country under the wide heaven. 

Every great achievement in art, in science, 
in commerce, communicates to the universal 
human spirit a salutary shock which in ever- 
widening circles spreads to regions the most 
remote and obscure, to break at last in linger- 
ing ripples on the ultimate shores of space and 
time. Out of a good source evil cannot flow; 
out of the light darkness cannot be born. The 
benignant influences that shall emanate from 
this great festival of peace shall not be bounded 
by oceans nor by continents. 



133 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

MEMORIAL ADDRESS BY INVITATION OF THE CONGRESS 

DELIVERED IN THE CAPITOL AT WASHINGTON 

FEBRUARY 27th, 1902 



WILLIAM McKmLEY 



FOR the third time the Congress of the 
United States are assembled to com- 
memorate the life and the death of a President 
slain by the hand of an assassin. The attention 
of the future historian will be attracted to the 
features which reappear with startling same- 
ness in all three of these awful crimes : the use- 
lessness, the utter lack of consequence of the 
act; the obscurity, the insignificance of the 
criminal; the blamelessness— so far as in our 
sphere of existence the best of men may be held 
blameless— of the victim. Not one of our 
murdered Presidents had an enemy in the 
world ; they were all of such pre-eminent purity 
of life that no pretext could be given for the 
attack of passional crime; they were all men 
of democratic instincts who could never have 
offended the most jealous advocates of equal- 
ity; they were of kindly and generous nature, 
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WILLIAM McKINLEY 

to whom wrong or injustice was impossible; 
of moderate fortune, whose slender means no- 
body could envy. They were men of austere 
virtue, of tender heart, of eminent abilities, 
which they had devoted with single minds to 
the good of the Republic. If ever men walked 
before God and man without blame, it was 
these three rulers of our people. The only 
temptation to attack their lives offered was 
their gentle radiance— to eyes hating the light 
that was offense enough. 

The stupid uselessness of such an infamy af- 
fronts the common sense of the world. One can 
conceive how the death of a dictator may 
change the political conditions of an Empire; 
how the extinction of a narrowing line of kings 
may bring in an alien dynasty. But in a well- 
ordered Republic like ours, the ruler may fall, 
but the State feels no tremor. Our beloved and 
revered leader is gone— but the natural pro- 
cess of our laws provides us a successor iden- 
tical in purpose and ideals, nourished by the 
same teachings, inspired by the same prin- 
ciples, pledged by tender affection as well as 
by high loyalty to carry to completion the im- 
mense task committed to his hands, and to 
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WILLIAM McKINLEY 

smite with iron severity every manifestation 
of that hideous crime which his mild predeces- 
sor, with his dying breath, forgave. The say- 
ings of celestial wisdom have no date; the 
words that reach ns, over two thousand years, 
out of the darkest hour of gloom the world has 
ever known, are true to the life to-day : ' ' They 
know not what they do." The blow struck at 
our dear friend and ruler was as deadly as 
blind hate could make it; but the blow struck 
at anarchy was deadlier still. 

What a world of insoluble problems such an 
event excites in the mind! Not merely in its 
personal, but in its public aspects, it presents 
a paradox not to be comprehended. Under a 
system of government so free and so impartial 
that we recognize its existence only by its bene- 
factions; under a social order so purely 
democratic that classes can not exist in it, af- 
fording opportunities so universal that even 
conditions are as changing as the winds, where 
the laborer of to-day is the capitalist of to- 
morrow; under laws which are the result of 
ages of evolution, so uniform and so beneficent 
that the President has just the same rights and 
privileges as the artisan; we see the same 
139 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

hellish growth of hatred and murder which 
dogs equally the footsteps of benevolent mon- 
archs and blood-stained despots. How many 
countries can join with us in the community of 
a kindred sorrow! I will not speak of those 
distant regions where assassination enters into 
the daily life of government. But among the 
nations bound to us by the ties of familiar 
intercourse— who can forget that wise and 
high-minded Autocrat who had earned the 
proud title of the Liberator? that enlightened 
and magnanimous citizen whom France still 
mourns? that brave and chivalrous King of 
Italy who only lived for his people? and, sad- 
dest of all, that lovely and sorrowing Empress, 
whose harmless life could hardly have excited 
the animosity of a demon. Against that 
devilish spirit nothing avails— neither virtue, 
nor patriotism, nor age nor youth, nor con- 
science nor pity. We can not even say that 
education is a sufficient safeguard against this 
baleful evil— for most of the wretches whose 
crimes have so shocked humanity in recent 
years are men not unlettered, who have gone 
from the common schools, through murder, to 
the scaffold. 

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WILLIAM McKINLEY 

Our minds can not discern the origin, nor 
conceive the extent of wickedness so perverse 
and so cruel ; but this does not exempt us from 
the duty of trying to control and counteract it. 
"We do not understand what electricity is; 
whence it comes or what its hidden properties 
may be. But we know it as a mighty force for 
good or evil— and so with the painful toil of 
years, men of learning and skill have labored 
to store and to subjugate it, to neutralize, and 
even to employ its destructive energies. This 
problem of anarchy is dark and intricate, but 
it ought to be within the compass of democratic 
government— although no sane mind can 
fathom the mysteries of these untracked and 
orbitless natures— to guard against their aber- 
rations, to take away from them the hope of 
escape, the long luxury of scandalous days in 
court, the unwholesome sympathy of hysterical 
degenerates, and so by degrees to make the 
crime not worth committing, even to these ab- 
normal and distorted souls. 

It would be presumptuous for me in this 

presence to suggest the details of remedial 

legislation for a malady so malignant. That 

task may safely be left to the skill and patience 

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WILLIAM McKINLEY 

of the National Congress, which have never 
been found unequal to any such emergency. 
The country believes that the memory of three 
murdered comrades of yours— all of whose 
voices still haunt these walls— will be a suffi- 
cient inspiration to enable you to solve even 
this abstruse and painful problem, which has 
dimmed so many pages of history with blood 
and with tears. 

Before an audience less sympathetic than 
this, I should not dare to speak of that great 
career which we have met to commemorate. 
But we are all his friends, and friends do not 
criticize each other's words about an open 
grave. I thank you for the honor you have 
done me in inviting me here, and not less for 
the kind forbearance I know I shall have from 
you in my most inadequate efforts to speak of 
him worthily. 

The life of William McKinley was, from his 
birth to his death, typically American. There 
is no environment, I should say, anywhere else 
in the world which could produce just such a 
character. He was born into that way of life 
which elsewhere is called the middle class, but 
which in this country is so nearly universal as 
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WILLIAM McKINLEY 

to make of other classes an almost negligible 
quantity. He was neither rich nor poor, 
neither proud nor humble ; he knew no hunger 
he was not sure of satisfjdng, no luxury which 
could enervate mind or body. His parents were 
sober, God-fearing people ; intelligent and up- 
right ; without pretension and without humility. 
He grew up in the company of boys like him- 
self ; wholesome, honest, self-respecting. They 
looked down on nobody ; they never felt it pos- 
sible they could be looked down upon. Their 
houses were the homes of probity, piety, patri- 
otism. They learned in the admirable school 
readers of fifty years ago the lessons of heroic 
and splendid life which have come down from 
the past. They read in their weekly news- 
papers the story of the world's progress, in 
which they were eager to take part, and of the 
sins and wrongs of civilization with which they 
burned to do battle. It was a serious and 
thoughtful time. The boys of that day felt 
dimly, but deeply, that days of sharp struggle 
and high achievement were before them. They 
looked at life with the wondering yet resolute 
eyes of a young esquire in his vigil of arms. 
They felt a time was coming when to them 
143 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

should be addressed the stern admonition of 
the Apostle, ''Quit you like men; be strong." 

It is not easy to give to those of a later 
generation any clear idea of that extraordinary 
spiritual awakening which passed over the 
country at the first red signal fires of the 
Civil War. It was not our earliest apocalypse ; 
a hundred years before the nation had been 
revealed to itself, when after long discussion 
and much searching of heart the people of the 
colonies had resolved that to live without lib- 
erty was worse than to die, and had therefore 
wagered in the solemn game of war ''their 
lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor." 
In a stress of heat and labor unutterable, the 
country had been hammered and welded to- 
gether; but thereafter for nearly a century 
there had been nothing in our life to touch the 
innermost fountain of feeling and devotion; 
we had had rumors of wars— even wars we had 
had, not without sacrifices and glory— but noth- 
ing which went to the vital self-consciousness 
of the country, nothing which challenged the 
nation's right to live. But in 1860 the nation 
was going down into the Valley of Decision. 

The question which had been debated on 
144 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

thousands of platforms, which had been dis- 
cussed in countless publications, which, thun- 
dered from innumerable pulpits, had caused 
in their congregations the bitter strife and dis- 
sension to which only cases of conscience can 
give rise, was everywhere pressing for solu- 
tion. And not merely in the various channels 
of publicity was it alive and clamorous. About 
every fireside in the land, in the conversation 
of friends and neighbors, and, deeper still, in 
the secrecy of millions of human hearts, the 
battle of opinion was waging ; and all men felt 
and saw— with more or less clearness— that 
an answer to the importunate question, Shall 
the nation live"? was due, and not to be denied. 
And I do not mean that in the North alone 
there was this austere wrestling with con- 
science. In the South as well, below all the 
effervescence and excitement of a people per- 
haps more given to eloquent speech than we 
were, there was the profound agony of ques- 
tion and answer, the summons to decide 
whether honor and freedom did not call them 
to revolution and war. It is easy for partisan- 
ship to say that the one side was right and that 
the other was wrong. It is still easier for an 



10 



145 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

indolent magnanimity to say that both were 
right. Perhaps in the wide view of ethics one 
is always right to follow his conscience, though 
it lead him to disaster and death. But history 
is inexorable. She takes no account of senti- 
ment and intention; and in her cold and 
luminous eyes that side is right which fights in 
harmony with the stars in their courses. The 
men are right through whose efforts and 
struggles the world is helped onward, and 
humanity moves to a higher level and a 
brighter day. 

The men who are living to-day and who were 
young in 1860 will never forget the glory and 
glamour that filled the earth and the sky when 
the long twilight of doubt and uncertainty was 
ending and the time of action had come. A 
speech by Abraham Lincoln was an event not 
only of high moral significance, but of far- 
reaching importance; the drilling of a militia 
company by Ellsworth attracted national at- 
tention; the fluttering of the flag in the clear 
sky drew tears from the eyes of young men. 
Patriotism, which had been a rhetorical ex- 
pression, became a passionate emotion, in 
which instinct, logic, and feeling were fused. 
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WILLIAM McKINLEY 

The country was worth saving; it could be 
saved only by fire; no sacrifice was too great; 
the young men of the country were ready for 
the sacrifice ; come weal, come woe, they were 
ready. 

At seventeen years of age "William McKinley 
heard this summons of his country. He was 
the sort of youth to whom a military life in 
ordinary times would possess no attractions. 
His nature was far different from that of the 
ordinary soldier. He had other dreams of life, 
its prizes and pleasures, than that of marches 
and battles. But to his mind there was no 
choice or question. The banner floating in the 
morning breeze was the beckoning gesture of 
his country. The thrilling notes of the trumpet 
called Mm— him and none other— into the 
ranks. His portrait in his first uniform is fam- 
iliar to you all— the short, stocky figure; the 
quiet, thoughtful face ; the deep, dark eyes. It 
is the face of a lad who could not stay at home 
when he thought he was needed in the field. 
He was of the stuff of which good soldiers are 
made. Had he been ten years older he would 
have entered at the head of a company and 
come out at the head of a division. But he did 
147 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

what he could. He enlisted as a private; he 
learned to obey. His serious, sensible ways, 
his prompt, alert efficiency soon attracted the 
attention of his superiors. He was so faithful 
in little things they gave him more and more to 
do. He was untiring in camp and on the 
march; swift, cool, and fearless in fight. He 
left the army with field rank when the war 
ended, brevetted by President Lincoln for 
gallantry in battle. 

In coming years when men seek to draw the 
moral of our great Civil War nothing will seem 
to them so admirable in all the history of our 
two magnificent armies as the way in which the 
war came to a close. When the Confederate 
army saw the time had come, they acknow- 
ledged the pitiless logic of facts, and ceased 
fighting. When the army of the Union saw it 
was no longer needed, without a murmur or 
question, making no terms, asking no return, 
in the flush of victory and fullness of might, 
it laid down its arms and melted back into the 
mass of peaceful citizens. There is no event, 
since the nation was born, which has so proved 
its solid capacity for self-government. Both 
sections share equally in that crown of glory. 
148 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

They had held a debate of incomparable im- 
portance and had fought it out with equal 
energy. A conclusion had been reached— and 
it is to the everlasting honor of both sides that 
they each knew when the war was over, and 
the hour of a lasting peace had struck. We may 
admire the desperate daring of others who 
prefer annihilation to compromise, but the 
palm of common sense, and, I will say, of en- 
lightened patriotism, belongs to the men like 
Grant and Lee, who knew when they had 
fought enough, for honor and for country. 

William McKinley, one of that sensible mil- 
lion of men, gladly laid down his sword and 
betook himself to his books. He quickly made 
up the time lost in soldiering. He attacked his 
Blackstone as he would have done a hostile en- 
trenchment ; finding the range of a country law 
library too narrow, he went to the Albany Law 
School, where he worked energetically with 
brilliant success ; was admitted to the bar and 
settled down to practice— a brevetted veteran 
of 24— in the quiet town of Canton, now and 
henceforward forever famous as the scene of 
his life and his place of sepulture. Here many 
blessings awaited him: high repute, profes- 
149 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

sional success, and a domestic affection so pure, 
so devoted and stainless that future poets, seek- 
ing an ideal of Christian marriage, will find in 
it a theme worthy of their songs. This is a sub- 
ject to which the lightest allusion seems prof- 
anation; but it is impossible to speak of Wil- 
liam McKinley without remembering that no 
truer, tenderer knight to his chosen lady ever 
lived among mortal men. If to the spirits of the 
just made perfect is permitted the conscious- 
ness of earthly things, we may be sure that his 
faithful soul is now watching over that gentle 
sufferer who counts the long hours in their 
shattered home in the desolate splendor of 
his fame. 

A man possessing the qualities with which 
nature had endowed McKinley seeks political 
activity as naturally as a growing plant seeks 
light and air. A wholesome ambition; a rare 
power of making friends and keeping them; 
a faith, which may be called religious, in his 
country and its institutions ; and, flowing from 
this, a belief that a man could do no nobler 
work than to serve such a country— these were 
the elements in his character that drew him 
irresistibly into public life. He had from the 
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WILLIAM McKINLEY 

beginning a remarkable equipment: a manner 
of singular grace and charm ; a voice of ringing 
quality and great carrying power— vast as 
were the crowds that gathered about him, he 
reached their utmost fringe without apparent 
effort. He had an extraordinary power of 
marshaling and presenting significant facts, so 
as to bring conviction to the average mind. 
His range of reading was not wide; he read 
only what he might some day find useful, and 
what he read his memory held like brass. 
Those who knew him well in those early days 
can never forget the consummate skill and 
power with which he would select a few pointed 
facts, and, blow upon blow, would hammer 
them into the attention of great assemblages in 
Ohio, as Jael drove the nail into the head of the 
Canaanite captain. He was not often impas- 
sioned ; he rarely resorted to the aid of wit or 
humor ; yet I never saw his equal in controlling 
and convincing a popular audience by sheer 
appeal to their reason and intelligence. He did 
not flatter or cajole them, but there was an 
implied compliment in the serious and sober 
tone in which he addressed them. He seemed 
one of them; in heart and feeling he was one 
151 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

of them. Each workingman in a great crowd 
might say : That is the sort of man I would like 
to be, and under more favoring circumstances 
might have been. He had the divine gift of 
sympathy, which, though given only to the 
elect, makes all men their friends. 

So it came naturally about that in 1876— the 
beginning of the second century of the Republic 
—he began, by an election to Congress, his 
political career. Thereafter for fourteen years 
this Chamber was his home. I use the word 
advisedly. Nowhere in the world was he so 
in harmony with his environment as here ; no- 
where else did his mind work with such full 
consciousness of its powers. The air of debate 
was native to him; here he drank delight of 
battle with his peers. In after days, when he 
drove by this stately pile, or when on rare oc- 
casions his duty called him here, he greeted 
his old haunts with the affectionate zest of a 
child of the house ; during all the last ten years 
of his life, filled as they were with activity and 
glory, he never ceased to be home-sick for this 
Hall. When he came to the Presidency, there 
was not a day when his Congressional service 
was not of use to him. Probably no other 
President has been in such full and cordial 
152 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

communion with Congress, if we may except 
Lincoln alone. McKinley knew the legislative 
body thoroughly, its composition, its methods, 
its habits of thought. He had the profoundest 
respect for its authority and an inflexible belief 
in the ultimate rectitude of its purposes. Our 
history shows how surely an Executive courts 
disaster and ruin by assuming an attitude of 
hostility or distrust to the Legislature ; and, on 
the other hand, McKinley 's frank and sincere 
trust and confidence in Congress were repaid 
by prompt and loyal support and co-operation. 
During his entire term of office this mutual 
trust and regard— so essential to the public 
welfare— was never shadowed by a single 
cloud. 

He was a Eepublican. He could not be any- 
thing else. A Union soldier grafted upon a 
Clay Whig, he necessarily believed in the 
^'American system"— in protection to home 
industries ; in a strong, aggressive nationality ; 
in a liberal construction of the Constitution. 
What any self-reliant nation might rightly do, 
he felt this nation had power to do, if required 
by the common welfare and not prohibited by 
our written charter. 

Following the natural bent of his mind, he 
153 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

devoted himself to questions of finance and 
revenue, to the essentials of the national house- 
keeping. He took high rank in the House from 
the beginning. His readiness in debate, his 
mastery of every subject he handled, the bright 
and amiable light he shed about him, and above 
all the unfailing courtesy and good will with 
which he treated friend and foe alike— one of 
the surest signatures of a nature born to great 
destinies— made his service in the House a 
pathway of unbroken success and brought him 
at last to the all-important post of Chairman 
of Ways and Means and leader of the majority. 
Of the famous revenue act which, in that cap- 
acity, he framed and carried through Congress, 
it is not my purpose here and now to speak. 
The embers of the controversy in the midst of 
which that law had its troubled being are yet 
too warm to be handled on a day like this. I 
may only say that it was never sufficiently 
tested to prove the praises of its friends or the 
criticism of its opponents. After a brief exist- 
ence it passed away, for a time, in the storm 
that swept the Republicans out of power. 
McKinley also passed through a brief zone of 
shadow ; his Congressional district having been 
154 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

rearranged for that purpose by a hostile 
legislature. 

'Someone has said it is easy to love our 
enemies ; they help us so much more than our 
friends. The people whose malevolent skill 
had turned McKinley out of Congress deserved 
well of him and of the Republic. Never was 
Nemesis more swift and energetic. The Repub- 
licans of Ohio were saved the trouble of choos- 
ing a Governor— the other side had chosen one 
for them. A year after McKinley left Congress 
he was made Governor of Ohio, and two years 
later he was re-elected, each time by majorities 
unhoped-for and overwhelming. He came to 
fill a space in the public eye which obscured a 
great portion of the field of vision. In two 
National Conventions, the Presidency seemed 
within his reach. But he had gone there in 
the interest of others and his honor forbade 
any dalliance with temptation. So his nay was 
nay— delivered with a tone and gesture there 
was no denying. His hour was not yet come. 

There was, however, no long delay. He be- 
came, from year to year, the most prominent 
politician and orator in the country. Pas- 
sionately devoted to the principles of his party, 
155 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

he was always ready to do anything, to go any- 
where, to proclaim its ideas and to support its 
candidates. His face and his voice became 
familiar to millions of our people; and 
wherever they were seen and heard, men be- 
came his partisans. His face was cast in a 
classic mold; you see faces like it in antique 
marble in the galleries of the Vatican and in 
the portraits of the great cardinal-statesmen 
of Italy ; his voice was the voice of the perfect 
orator— ringing, vibrating, tireless, persuading 
by its very sound, by its accent of sincere con- 
viction. So prudent and so guarded were all 
his utterances, so lofty his courtesy, that he 
never embarrassed his friends, and never of- 
fended his opponents. For several months be- 
fore the Republican National Convention met 
in 1896, it was evident to all who had eyes to 
see that Mr. McKinley was the only probable 
candidate of his party. Other names were 
mentioned, of the highest rank in ability, char- 
acter, and popularity ; they were supported by 
powerful combinations ; but the nomination of 
McKinley as against the field was inevitable. 

The campaign he made will be always mem- 
orable in our political annals. He and his 
156 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

friends had thought that the issue for the year 
was the distinctive and historic difference be- 
tween the two parties on the subject of the 
tariff. To this wager of battle the discussions 
of the previous four years distinctly pointed. 
But no sooner had the two parties made their 
nominations than it became evident that the 
opposing candidate declined to accept the field 
of discussion chosen by the Republicans, and 
proposed to put forward as the main issue the 
free coinage of silver. McKinley at once ac- 
cepted this challenge, and, taking the battle for 
protection as already won, went with energy 
into the discussion of the theories presented 
by his opponents. He had wisely concluded 
not to leave his home during the canvass, thus 
avoiding a proceeding which has always been 
of sinister augury in our politics ; but from the 
front porch of his modest house in Canton he 
daily addressed the delegations which came 
from every part of the country to greet him in 
a series of speeches so strong, so varied, so 
pertinent, so full of facts briefly set forth, of 
theories embodied in a single phrase, that they 
formed the hourly text for the other speakers 
of his party, and give probably the most con- 
157 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

vincing proof we have of his surprising fertil- 
ity of resource and flexibility of mind. All this 
was done without anxiety or strain. I remem- 
ber a day I spent with him during that busy 
summer. He had made nineteen speeches the 
day before; that day he made many. But in 
the intervals of these addresses he sat in his 
study and talked, with nerves as quiet and a 
mind as free from care as if we had been 
spending a holiday at the seaside or among 
the hills. 

When he came to the Presidency he con- 
fronted a situation of the utmost difficulty, 
which might well have appalled a man of less 
serene and tranquil self-confidence. There had 
been a state of profound commercial and in- 
dustrial depression, from which his friends had 
said his election would relieve the country. Our 
relations with the outside world left much to 
be desired. The feeling between the Northern 
and Southern sections of the Union was lack- 
ing in the cordiality which was necessary to 
the welfare of both. Hawaii had asked for an- 
nexation and had been rejected by the preced- 
ing Administration. There was a state of 
things in the Caribbean which could not per- 
158 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

manently endure. Our neighbor's house was 
on fire, and there were grave doubts as to our 
rights and duties in the premises. A man 
either weak or rash, either irresolute or head- 
strong, might have brought ruin on himself and 
incalculable harm to the country. 

Again I crave the pardon of those who differ 
with me, if, against all my intentions, I happen 
to say a word which may seem to them unbe- 
fitting the place and hour. But I am here to 
give the opinion which his friends entertained 
of President McKinley, of course claiming no 
immunity from criticism in what I shall say. 
I believe, then, that the verdict of history will 
be that he met all these grave questions with 
perfect valor and incomparable ability ; that in 
grappling with them he rose to the full height 
of a great occasion, in a manner which re- 
dounded to the lasting benefit of the country 
and to his own immortal honor. 

The least desirable form of glory to a man 
of his habitual mood and temper— that of suc- 
cessful war— was nevertheless conferred upon 
him by uncontrollable events. He felt the con- 
flict must come ; he deplored its necessity ; he 
strained almost to breaking his relations with 
159 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

his friends, in order, first— if it might be— to 
prevent and then to postpone it to the latest 
possible moment. But when the die was cast, 
he labored with the utmost energy and ardor, 
and with an intelligence in military matters 
which showed how much of the soldier still sur- 
vived in the mature statesman to push forward 
the war to a decisive close. War was an 
anguish to him; he wanted it short and con- 
clusive. His merciful zeal communicated itself 
to his subordinates, and the war, so long 
dreaded, whose consequences were so momen- 
tous, ended in a hundred days. 

Mr. Stedman, the dean of our poets, has 
called him "Augmenter of the State." It is 
a noble title ; if justly conferred, it ranks him 
among the few whose names may be placed 
definitely and forever in charge of the historic 
Muse. Under his rule Hawaii has come to us, 
and Tutuila; Porto Rico and the vast archi- 
pelago of the East. Cuba is free. Our position 
in the Caribbean is assured beyond the pos- 
sibility of future question. The doctrine called 
by the name of Monroe, so long derided and 
denied by alien publicists, evokes now no chal- 
lenge or contradiction when uttered to the 

160 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

world. It has become an international truism. 
Our sister republics to the south of us are con- 
vinced that we desire only their peace and 
prosperity. Europe knows that we cherish no 
dreams but those of world-wide commerce, the 
benefit of which shall be to all nations. The 
State is augmented, but it threatens no nation 
under heaven. As to those regions which have 
come under the shadow of our flag, the possibil- 
ity of their being damaged by such a change of 
circumstances was in the view of McKinley 
a thing unthinkable. To believe that we could 
not administer them to their advantage, was 
to turn infidel to our American faith of more 
than a hundred years. 

In dealing with foreign powers, he will take 
rank with the greatest of our diplomatists. It 
was a world of which he had little special 
knowledge before coming to the Presidency. 
But this marvelous adaptability was in nothing 
more remarkable than in the firm grasp he 
immediately displayed in international rela- 
tions. In preparing for war and in the 
restoration of peace he was alike adroit, cour- 
teous, and far-sighted. When a sudden emer- 
gency declared itself, as in China, in a state of 

" 161 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

things of which our history furnished no pre- 
cedent and international law no safe and 
certain precept, he hesitated not a moment to 
take the course marked out for him by con- 
siderations of humanity and the national inter- 
ests. Even while the legations were fighting 
for their lives against bands of infuriated 
fanatics, he decided that we were at peace with 
China ; and while that conclusion did not hinder 
him from taking the most energetic measures 
to rescue our imperiled citizens, it enabled him 
to maintain close and friendly relations with 
the wise and heroic viceroys of the south, whose 
resolute stand saved that ancient Empire from 
anarchy and spoliation. He disposed of every 
question as it arose with a promptness and 
clarity of vision that astonished his advisers, 
and he never had occasion to review a judg- 
ment or reverse a decision. 

By patience, by firmness, by sheer reason- 
ableness, he improved our understanding with 
all the great powers of the world, and rightly 
gained the blessing which belongs to the peace- 
makers. 

But the achievements of the nation in war 
and diplomacy are thrown in the shade by the 
162 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

vast economical developments which took place 
during Mr. McKinley's Administration. Up to 
the time of his first election, the country was 
suffering from a long period of depression, the 
reasons of which I will not try to seek. But 
from the moment the ballots were counted that 
betokened his advent to power a great and 
momentous movement in advance declared it- 
self along all the lines of industry and com- 
merce. In the very month of his inauguration 
steel rails began to be sold at $18 a ton— one of 
the most significant facts of modern times. It 
meant that American industries had adjusted 
themselves to the long depression— that 
through the power of the race to organize and 
combine, stimulated by the conditions then 
prevailing, and perhaps by the prospect of 
legislation favorable to industry, America had 
begun to undersell the rest of the world. The 
movement went on without ceasing. The Presi- 
dent and his party kept the pledges of their 
platform and their canvass. The Dingley bill 
was speedily framed and set in operation. All 
industries responded to the new stimulus and 
American trade set out on its new crusade, not 
to conquer the world, but to trade with it on 

163 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

terms advantageous to all concerned. I will 
not weary you with statistics; but one or two 
words seem necessary to show how the acts of 
McKinley as President kept pace with his pro- 
fessions as candidate. His four years of ad- 
ministration were costly ; we carried on a war 
which, though brief, was expensive. Although 
we borrowed two hundred millions and paid 
our own expenses, without asking for indem- 
nity, the effective reduction of the debt now 
exceeds the total of the war bonds. We pay 
six millions less in interest than we did before 
the war and no bond of the United States yields 
the holder 2 per cent on its market value. So 
much for the Government credit ; and we have 
five hundred and forty-six millions of gross 
gold in the Treasury. 

But, coming to the development of our trade 
in the four McKinley years, we seem to be 
entering the realm of fable. In the last fiscal 
year our excess of exports over imports was 
$664,592,826. In the last four years it was 
$2,354,442,213. These figures are so stupendous 
that they mean little to a careless reader— but 
consider ! The excess of exports over imports 
for the whole preceding period from 1790 to 

164 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

1897— from Washington to McKinley— was 
only $356,808,822. 

The most extravagant promises made by the 
sanguine McKinley advocates five years ago 
are left out of sight by these sober facts. The 
''debtor nation" has become the chief creditor 
nation. The financial center of the world, 
which required thousands of years to journey 
from the Euphrates to the Thames and the 
Seine, seems passing to the Hudson between 
daybreak and dark. 

I will not waste your time by explaining that 
I do not invoke for any man the credit of this 
vast result. The captain can not claim that it 
is he who drives the mighty steamship over the 
tumbling billows of the trackless deep; but 
praise is justly due him if he has made the best 
of her tremendous powers, if he has read aright 
the currents of the sea and the lessons of the 
stars. And we should be ungrateful, if in this 
hour of prodigious prosperity we should fail 
to remember that William McKinley with sub- 
lime faith foresaw it, with indomitable courage 
labored for it, put his whole heart and mind 
into the work of bringing it about ; that it was 
his voice which, in dark hours, rang out, herald- 

165 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

ing the coming light, as over the twilight waters 
of the Nile the mystic cry of Memnon an- 
nounced the dawn to Egypt, waking from sleep. 

Among the most agreeable incidents of the 
President's term of office were the two journeys 
he made to the 'South. The moral reunion of 
the sections— so long and so ardently desired 
by him — had been initiated by the Spanish war, 
when the veterans of both sides, and their sons, 
had marched shoulder to shoulder together 
under the same banner. The President in 
these journeys sought, with more than usual 
eloquence and pathos, to create a sentiment 
which should end forever the ancient feud. He 
was too good a politician to expect any results 
in the way of votes in his favor, and he accom- 
plished none. But for all that the good seed 
did not fall on barren ground. In the warm 
and chivalrous hearts of that generous people, 
the echo of his cordial and brotherly words will 
linger long, and his name will be cherished in 
many a household where even yet the Lost 
Cause is worshipped. 

Mr. McKinley was re-elected by an over- 
whelming majority. There had been little 
doubt of the result among well-informed 
166 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

people; but when it was known, a profound 
feeling of relief and renewal of trust were 
evident among the leaders of capital and of 
industry, not only in this country, but every- 
where. They felt that the immediate future 
was secure, and that trade and commerce might 
safely push forward in every field of effort and 
enterprise. He inspired universal confidence, 
which is the life-blood of the commercial system 
of the world. It began frequently to be said 
that such a state of things ought to continue; 
one after another, men of prominence said that 
the President was his own best successor. He 
paid little attention to these suggestions until 
they were repeated by some of his nearest 
friends. Then he saw that one of the most 
cherished traditions of our public life was in 
danger. The generation which has seen the 
prophecy of the Papal throne— Non videbis 
annos Petri — twice contradicted by the lon- 
gevity of holy men was in peril of forgetting the 
unwritten law of our Republic : Thou shalt not 
exceed the years of Washington. The Presi- 
dent saw it was time to speak, and in his char- 
acteristic manner he spoke, briefly, but enough. 
"Where the lightning strikes there is no need of 
167 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

iteration. From that hour, no one • dreamed 
of doubting his purpose of retiring at the end 
of his second term, and it will be long before 
another such lesson is required. 

He felt that the harvest time was come, to 
garner in the fruits of so much planting and 
culture, and he was determined that nothing he 
might do or say should be liable to the reproach 
of a personal interest. Let us say frankly he 
was a party man ; he believed the policies ad- 
vocated by him and his friends counted for 
much in the country's progress and prosperity. 
He hoped in his second term to accomplish sub- 
stantial results in the development and affirma- 
tion of those policies. I spent a day with him 
shortly before he started on his fateful journey 
to Buffalo. Never had I seen him higher in 
hope and patriotic confidence. He was as sure 
of the future of his country as the Psalmist 
who cried, ' ' Glorious things are spoken of thee, 
thou City of God." He was gratified to the 
heart that we had arranged a treaty which gave 
us a free hand in the Isthmus. In fancy he saw 
the canal already built and the argosies of the 
world passing through it in peace and amity. 
He saw in the immense evolution of American 
168 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

trade the fulfillment of all his dreams, the re- 
ward of all his labors. He was— I need not say 
— an ardent protectionist, never more sincere 
and devoted than during these last days of his 
life. He regarded reciprocity as the bulwark 
of protection— not a breach, but a fulfillment 
of the law. The treaties which for four years 
had been preparing under his personal super- 
vision he regarded as ancillary to the general 
scheme. He was opposed to any revolutionary 
plan of change in the existing legislation; he 
was careful to point out that everything he had 
done was in faithful compliance with the law 
itself. 

In that mood of high hope, of generous ex- 
pectation, he went to Buffalo, and there, on the 
threshold of eternity, he delivered that memor- 
able speech, worthy for its loftiness of tone, 
its blameless morality, its breadth of view, to 
be regarded as his testament to the nation. 
Through all his pride of country and his joy of 
its success, runs the note of solemn warning, as 
in Kipling's noble hymn, ''Lest we forget.'* 

Our capacity to produce has developed so enor- 
mously and our products have so multiplied that the 
problem of more markets requires our urgent and 

169 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

immediate attention. Only a broad and enlightened 
policy will keep what we have. No other policy will 
get more. In these times of marvelous business 
energy and gain we ought to be looking to the future, 
strengthening the weak places in our industrial and 
commercial systems, that we may be ready for any 
storm or strain. 

By sensible trade arrangements which will not 
interrupt our home production we shall extend the 
outlets for our increasing surplus. A system which 
provides a mutual exchange of commodities is mani- 
festly essential to the continued and healthful growth 
of our export trade. We must not repose in fancied 
security that we can forever sell everything and buy 
little or nothing. If such a thing were possible, it 
would not be best for us or for those with whom we 
deal. . . . Reciprocity is the natural outgrowth of 
our wonderful industrial development under the 
domestic policy now firmly established. . . . The 
period of exclusiveness is past. The expansion of 
our trade and commerce is the pressing problem. 
Commercial wars are unprofitable. A policy of good 
will and friendly trade relations will prevent re- 
prisals. Reciprocity treaties are in harmony with 
the spirit of the times; measures of retaliation are 
not. 

I wish I had time to read the whole of this 
170 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

wise and weighty speech ; nothing I might say 
could give such a picture of the President's 
mind and character. His years of apprentice- 
ship had been served. He stood that day past 
master of the art of statesmanship. He had 
nothing more to ask of the people. He owed 
them nothing but truth and faithful service. 
His mind and heart were purged of the tempta- 
tions which beset all men engaged in the 
struggle to survive. In view of the revelation 
of his nature vouchsafed to us that day, and 
the fate which impended over him, we can only 
say in deep affection and solemn awe, ' ' Blessed 
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. ' ' 
Even for that vision he was not unworthy. 

He had not long to wait. The next day sped 
the bolt of doom, and for a week after— in an 
agony of dread broken by illusive glimpses of 
hope that our prayers might be answered — the 
nation waited for the end. Nothing in the 
glorious life that we saw gradually waning was 
more admirable and exemplary than its close. 
The gentle humanity of his words, when he saw 
his assailant in danger of summary vengeance, 
' ' Don 't let them hurt him ' ' ; his chivalrous care 
that the news should be broken gently to his 
171 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

wife ; the fine courtesy with which he apologized 
for the damage which his death would bring to 
the great Exhibition; and the heroic resigna- 
tion of his final words, "It is God's way. His 
will, not ours, be done, ' ' were all the instinctive 
expressions of a nature so lofty and so pure 
that pride in its nobility at once softened and 
enhanced the nation's sense of loss. The Re- 
public grieved over such a son— but is proud 
for ever of having produced him. After all, in 
spite of its tragic ending, his life was extraor- 
dinarily happy. He had, all his days, troops 
of friends, the cheer of fame and fruitful labor ; 
and he became, at last. 

On fortune's crowning slope, 
The pillar of a people's hope, 
The center of a world 's desire. 

He was fortunate even in his untimely death, 
for an event so tragical called the world im- 
peratively to the immediate study of his life 
and character, and thus anticipated the sure 
praises of posterity. 

Every young and growing people has to 
meet, at moments, the problems of its destiny. 
Whether the question comes, as in Egypt, from 
a sphinx, symbol of the hostile forces of omni- 
potent nature, who punishes with instant death 
172 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

our failure to understand her meaning; or 
whether it comes, as in Jerusalem, from the 
Lord of Hosts, who commands the building of 
His temple, it comes always with the warning 
that the past is past, and experience vain. 
^'Your fathers, where are they? and the 
prophets, do they live forever?" The fathers 
are dead ; the prophets are silent ; the questions 
are new, and have no answer but in time. 

When the horny outside case which protects 
the infancy of a chrysalis nation suddenly 
bursts, and, in a single abrupt shock, it finds 
itself floating on wings which had not existed 
before, whose strength it has never tested, 
among dangers it can not foresee and is with- 
out experience to measure, every motion is a 
problem, and every hesitation may be an error. 
The past gives no clue to the future. The 
fathers, where are they? and the prophets, do 
they live forever? We are ourselves the 
fathers ! We are ourselves the prophets ! The 
questions that are put to us we must answer 
without delay, without help— for the sphinx 
allows no one to pass. 

At such moments we may be humbly grateful 
to have had leaders simple in mind, clear in 
vision— as far as human vision can safely ex- 
173 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

tend— penetrating in knowledge of men, supple 
and flexible under the strains and pressures of 
society, instinct with the energy of new life and 
untried strength, cautious, calm, and, above all, 
gifted in a supreme degree with the most surely 
victorious of all political virtues— the genius of 
infinite patience. 

The obvious elements which enter into the 
fame of a public man are few and by no means 
recondite. The man who fills a great station in 
a period of change, who leads his country suc- 
cessfully through a time of crisis ; who, by his 
power of persuading and controlling others, 
has been able to command the best thought of 
his age, so as to leave his country in a moral 
or material condition in advance of where he 
found it— such a man's position in history is 
secure. If, in addition to this, his written or 
spoken words possess the subtle quality which 
carries them far and lodges them in men's 
hearts; and, more than all, if his utterances 
and actions, while informed with a lofty 
morality, are yet tinged with the glow of 
human sympathy, the fame of such a man 
will shine like a beacon through the mists 
of ages— an object of reverence, of imitation, 
174 



WILLIAM McKINLEY 

and of love. It should be to us an occasion 
of solemn pride that in the three great crises 
of our history such a man was not denied 
us. The moral value to a nation of a re- 
nown such as Washington's and Lincoln's 
and McKinley 's is beyond all computation. No 
loftier ideal can be held up to the emulation of 
ingenuous youth. With such examples we can 
not be wholly ignoble. Grateful as we may be 
for what they did, let us be still more grateful 
for what they were. While our daily being, 
our public policies, still feel the influence of 
their work, let us pray that in our spirits their 
lives may be voluble, calling us upward and 
onward. 

There is not one of us but feels prouder of 
his native land because the august figure of 
Washington presided over its beginnings; no 
one but vows it a tenderer love because Lincoln 
poured out his blood for it; no one but must 
feel his devotion for his country renewed and 
kindled when he remembers how McKinley 
loved, revered, and served it, showed in his life 
how a citizen should live, and in his last hour 
taught us how a gentleman could die. 



175 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

HARVARD— PEINCETON— CALIFORNIA 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

ON RECEIVING THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF LAWS, 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY, JUNE 25th, 1902 

ASCIENTIFIC friend was saying to me to- 
day that the one thing nature insists upon 
is equilibrium, which may be called the physical 
equivalent of justice. I suppose we only ar- 
rive at it by a process of oscillation ; and I am 
led to accept this opinion by the kindness I 
have here received. Such occasions are per- 
haps intended, in the order of things, to make 
amends for much that public men have to meet 
in their daily lives. When you are too kind, 
it may not be unwholesome for us to consider 
that there are arrears to make up. If we know 
we have done nothing to deserve such kind- 
ness, we also know ourselves incapable of the 
infamies which are laid to our charge. In 
future, when I am unduly chastened, I shall 
reflect that Harvard has put to my credit a 
179 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

fund of supererogatory merit which may keep 
me solvent, in any stress of weather. 

Let me say, Mr. Chairman, with profound 
sincerity and gratitude, that I shall always re- 
gard the honor I have received from this 
renowned University as my strong shield and 
defense against misconception from without 
and against discouragement from within. 
There is something in the complex traditions, 
in the accumulated intuitions of a great or- 
ganism like this that seems to confer on it an 
extra-human power of getting at essentials, of 
seeing the man under his faults and follies, of 
taking into account, as we hope Heaven does, 
the intention, under all contradictions and im- 
perfections. In the case of him with whom I 
was to have visited you last year, who deprived 
himself of the great pleasure of being here 
only in obedience to the highest and tenderest 
sense of duty, who hoped still to come to har- 
vest your greetings, but who has received in- 
stead, from no mortal hands, peace and bless- 
edness eternal— in his case, I say, it required 
no special acumen to see his deserving. It was 
easy to recognize that rare combination of 
matchless abilities and the purest purposes, 
180 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

and that incomparable genius for government 
whicli, united with exalted patriotism, had 
compelled as it will always compel, success and 
glory. And if I may compare a cedar on Leba- 
non to a weed in the wall, I will be so bold 
as to say that in paying me this too generous 
compliment, not warranted, I keenly feel, by 
anything I have accomplished, you have, I be- 
lieve, intended to give your lofty recognition 
to the purpose with which I entered upon office 
and the motives which have so far guided me 
—and these, I trust, are not altogether un- 
worthy even of the high commission you allow 
me to bear in your name. 

I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for what you 
have said of my branch of the public work ; we 
have labored under the same roof at kindred 
tasks; we have sat at the same council table. 
Now that you have promoted yourself to the 
superior rank of private citizenship, your in- 
timate knowledge of the things whereof you 
speak makes your approval doubly grateful. 
The rest of us will be indeed happy if, when 
we go, we can leave behind us a record so sub- 
stantial and so stainless. I thank all of you, 
gentlemen, for the kind manner in which you 
181 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

have received the Chairman's remarks. Per- 
haps I may be pardoned for saying a word in 
reference to the subject. There is little of the 
.occult or the esoteric about the conduct of our 
diplomacy in modern times. The principles 
which have governed me are of limpid sim- 
plicity. We have sought in all things the in- 
terest and honor of our own country. We have 
never found this incompatible with a due re- 
gard for the interest and honor of other 
powers. We have treated all our neighbors 
with frankness and courtesy ; we have received 
courtesy and frankness in return. We have 
set no traps; we have wasted no energy in 
evading the imaginary traps of others. We 
have sometimes been accused of credulity; but 
our credulity has not always gone unjustified. 
Once all the world said to us : " How can you 
believe a story so preposterous?" and a few 
weeks later all the world believed it, with joy 
and thanksgiving. There might be worse repu- 
tations for a country to acquire than that of 
always speaking the truth, and always ex- 
pecting it from others. In bargaining we have 
tried not to get the worst of the deal; re- 
membering, however, that the best bargains 
are those that satisfy both sides. 
182 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

It must be confessed our horizon is expand- 
ing ; we are now too big to shirk our fair share 
of responsibility; let us hope we may never 
be big enough to have outgrown our con- 
science. We owe it to our past to be true to 
our history; we owe it to our future not to be 
false to our ideals. And this we cannot be 
under the leadership of that militant son of 
Harvard who now sits in the seat of Washing- 
ton whose education, begun here, has been con- 
tinued in the mountains of the West, in varied 
and exacting civil administration, in the storm 
and stress of battle, and on the comely height 
of supreme power. 

You may be sure that the fair renown of 
Harvard will never suffer in the hands of 
Theodore Roosevelt. 

There are many crosses and trials in the life 
of one who is endeavoring to serve the com- 
monwealth, but there are also two permanent 
sources of comfort. One is the support and 
sympathy of honest and reasonable people. 
The other is the conviction dwelling forever, 
like a well of living water, in the hearts of all 
of us who have faith in the country, that all we 
do, in the fear of God and the love of the land, 
will somehow be overruled to the public good ; 

183 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

and that even our errors and failures cannot 
greatly check the irresistible onward march of 
this mighty Republic, the consummate evolu- 
tion of countless ages, called by divine voices 
to a destiny grander and brighter than we can 
conceive, and moving always, consciously or 
unconsciously, along lines of beneficent 
achievement whose constant aims and ultimate 
ends are peace and righteousness. 



ON RECEIVING THE DEGEEE OF DOCTOR OF LAWS, 
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY, OCTOBER 22, 1900 

My gratitude for this distinguished honor is 
not diminished— it is rather enlianced— by the 
sense of my personal unworthiness of it. I 
accept it. Sir, with deep appreciation, for I am 
allowed to interpret it as a sign of your ap- 
proval of the manner in which I and my 
colleagues in the Government— under the di- 
rection of the President— have conducted the 
foreign relations of the country for the past 
two years. They have been years of much 
labor and many perplexities and if any meas- 
ure of success has attended our efforts, it has 
been due, not to any strength or ability of mine, 
184 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

but to the fact that our course was so clearly 
marked out for us by a century of national tra- 
ditions, from which we have never swerved. 
We have believed in the country as our fathers 
did, in its high and beneficent destiny, and, so 
believing, we needed to admit no other con- 
siderations than those of the national welfare ; 
we had to hearken to no voices but the call of 
duty and honor. I hope I may say— even in 
this presence— that the light which has guided 
me has been at least of kin to that ''bright 
effluence" which has made this great Uni- 
versity for so many generations a radiant 
beacon to the continent, of sound learning and 
pure morals. In the brief space of public 
service which may yet be mine, I can have no 
loftier inspiration than the desire to become 
less unworthy of the honor you have done me 
and the responsibility you have to-day laid 
upon me. 

UNIVERSITY OP CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY, MAY 15, 1901 

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: It is 

not difficult for you to appreciate the feelings 

of profound depression with which we, the 

185 



AT THE UNIVEfRSITIES 

associates of the President in this journey, ap- 
pear before you to-day. He had long looked 
forward to the pleasure of meeting you in per- 
son; until an hour ago he had not abandoned 
that hope. But the serious condition of Mrs. 
McKinley's health has made it impossible for 
him to leave the city of San Francisco to-day. 
He charged us therefore to come in his stead, 
and express his profound feelings of sorrow 
and regret that he is not able to be with you. 
I can well appreciate your sense of disappoint- 
ment; I hope you can sympathize a little with 
ours. 

President McKinley would have come to 
you, with enthusiasm as warm as yours, with 
sympathies as quick as those of the youngest 
among you, to bring to you some of his gar- 
nered sheaves of experience and of wisdom. 
It is aflflicting to me that I am forced to stand 
before you, and to plead m forma pauperis, 
with empty hands. 

The President would have told you how he, 
as well as the rest of us, from the moment of 
our entrance into this wonderful State of Cali- 
fornia, has been charmed and delighted with 
everything he has seen and all he has met. You 
186 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

have, indeed, a goodly heritage. It would be 
hard to find in any land so much of material 
beauty as we have seen since we came over the 
mountains and deserts into these verdant val- 
leys—marvelous in .color, in fruitfulness and 
charm. It is a country of easy miracles. Every- 
thing is possible to such a State and such a 
people. Underlying all the radiant attractive- 
ness which the outward aspect of nature every- 
where displays, there is the element of force 
and gi'eatness which is equally unmistakable. 
The beauty of California is not the ''fatal 
gift" of which Filicaja sang in words of more 
melody and bitterness than perhaps ever were 
compressed into fourteen lines of literature. 
The beauty of this imperial State, instead of 
being a source of weakness and disaster, as 
that of Italy has been, through troubled cen- 
turies, to her,— is an element of strength and 
power. It is like the proud beauty of an Em- 
press, gilding her crown with transcendent 
luster, rather than that of a peasant, which at- 
tracts the notice of a marching soldier. This 
mighty state, a powerful member of an in- 
vincible Union, has nothing to fear from the 
cupidity or envy of any passer-by. You are 
187 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

born to great destinies— you are fated to great 
fortunes. An important present is yours, a 
vaster future awaits you. And since I have 
spoken of Italy, I will refer once more to the 
thought, which has been much in our minds 
since we arrived here, of that famous aphorism 
of Goethe, "Beyond the Alps lies Italy." Be- 
yond the ruggedness of the mountains, the 
amenity of these laughing valleys ; beyond the 
gray waste of the desert, this paradise of fruit- 
age and bloom. But the words of the sublime 
poet are still more applicable to you in a moral 
sense. In the march of political and social 
culture, your Alps are all behind you. The 
difficulties and dangers through which you 
gained your position in the world, have passed 
away forever. Now new and greater achieve- 
ments await you, the conquests of the intellect, 
the victories of the spirit. And in these, as in 
your material development and in the onward 
progress of your State, you need dread no 
rivals, you need shrink from no competition. 
It is evident that among all your advantages, 
the greatest of all, that of public spirit, of civic 
pride and devotion, is not lacking. A shining 
proof of this is in this magnificent institution 
188 



AT THE UNIVERSITIES 

of learning, the fruit of an enlightened public 
policy, and of intelligent private munificence. 
It is impossible to set bounds to the far-reach- 
ing influence of an establishment like this and 
like your sister university at Palo Alto. You 
start, in full-statured youth, where the institu- 
tions of the old world have arrived after ages 
of successful effort and development. Who 
can compute tlie power for good, in all the 
future, of these great centers of illumination, 
rising full-orbed in the very dawn of your his- 
tory? How profound the significance of the 
fact that here, at the utmost verge of this vast 
continent, stands an Oxford, a Cambridge, 
ready made ! 

Young men and women of California!— your 
Alps are passed: your Italy lies before you. 
You have only to enter in, and take possession 
of your magnificent inheritance. In the name 
of the President, I bid you God-speed on your 
way. 



189 



COMMERCIAL CLUB DINNER 



PREPARED FOR THE COMMERCIAL CLUB OF CHICAGO, DECEMBER, 
1904, BUT NOT DELIVERED, OWING TO THE DEATH OF A 
BROTHER OF MR. HAY'S 



COMMEKCIAL CLUB DINNER 

CHICAGO, 1901 

I AM glad of the privilege of expressing the 
heartfelt gratitude of all my associates, and 
my own also, for the more than princely hos- 
pitality of Chicago. We have received much 
kindness. We have seen many splendid sights, 
but Chicago itself has been the most glorious 
of all. I hardly believe you know how magnif- 
icent you have been during the last few days. 
To do the greatest things in the grandest. man- 
ner, and to think little about it, seems to me 
the distinguishing characteristic of this won- 
derful place. 

One of the first men of letters, one of the 
deepest thinkers of England, while expressing 
his regret that so few people in Europe had 
seen the greatest spectacle of modern times, 
the Chicago Fair, said to me : ' ' The fault was 
partly in the people of Chicago. They do not 
advertise themselves enough." Whenever I 
come to Chicago I am struck anew by the 

^ 193 



COMMERCIAL CLUB DINNER 

justice of the observation and by the reasons 
for it. The fact is that such a thing is impos- 
sible ; because in the first place you are too busy 
with other matters to give the advertising 
sufficient attention, and besides, no advertising 
could do justice to Chicago. 

It is a city which has always occupied a large 
place in my thoughts. It is the home of many 
of my dearest friends. It is the great emporium 
of the State in which I passed the days of my 
childhood and my youth. It is, in a certain 
sense, my twin. I was born in the first year of 
its civic life. We were young together, but 
there, I am sorry to say, the parallel ends. 
Aurora and Tithonus were young together; 
but the one grew old and gray, while the other 
flourished in immortal beauty and youth. In 
the days when Chicago and I were both young, 
it was my lot to see a good deal of the outside 
world, and it was always a pleasure to me, in 
viewing what was most interesting and pic- 
turesque in decaying civilizations to think, by 
way of contrast, of the brilliant and vigorous 
municipality that was swiftly taking shape on 
the shores of Lake Michigan, unlike anything 
hitherto seen. I talked about it as young men 
194 



COMMERCIAL CLUB DINNER 

will about things that interest them, and was 
sometimes goodnaturedly rallied on my vehe- 
ment claims and large prophecies. But when- 
ever I come here I see how far beyond the pos- 
sibilities of brag are the simple facts of your 
marvelous growth. The boasting of the trav- 
eling man, the prophetic raptures of poets are 
alike inadequate. Chicago speaks for herself, 
in a language of her own, a language the world 
must learn to interpret, for Chicago is a fact 
in which the world is concerned. 

No other city so epitomizes the prodigious 
strength, the unlimited promise of the country 
and the age. The gigantic heart of the conti- 
nent seems beating and throbbing here, send- 
ing its currents of warm vitality through every 
vein of the country. On one side you have the 
prairie, levelled as by the hand of Providence 
for the building of an imperial city whose 
bounds no man can foretell : on the other, the 
lake, in its endless facilities for commerce, 
seems only an extension of the mighty mart. 
What is this we heard the other day of forty 
miles of shipping delayed by a temporary ob- 
struction of your great water way? Your 
geographical position insured you greatness 
195 



COMMERCIAL CLUB DINNER 

when the world was made ; and all modern his- 
tory has wrought for your prosperity. But all 
this peerless store of opportunity would not 
have availed, had it not been for the alert and 
indomitable spirit of your people. The ab- 
original dwellers in this region were called 
mini— which is by interpretation Men. It was 
men who built this town. 

Opportunity alone never made a man or a 
city. "The skirts of happy chance" must be 
grasped with a firm hand. The man, or the 
municipality, fated to greatness, makes profit 
out of storm or sunshine, out of weal or woe, 
out of luck or disaster. Of the two capital 
events in your history, the Fire and the Fair, 
one an almost incalculable calamity, the other 
the greatest opportunity of the age, it is hard 
to tell which contributed most to the growth 
and prestige of Chicago. From the smoulder- 
ing embers of that wide desolation of 1871 rose 
the public spirit of this stalwart town, like an 
invincible weapon, forged in flame and tem- 
pered with the chill of adversity, ready for any 
achievement. And when, in 1893, the time and 
the occasion met, to show whether Chicago was 
worthy of her immense prosperity, she seized 
196 



COMMERCIAL CLUB DINNER 

the chance with a strength of grasp and a cer- 
tainty of touch, that fixed her place at once and 
forever in the world of civilization. Never 
again could envy or malice say that this city 
was given too much to the pursuit of material 
gain. I know of no other town on earth which 
would have been capable of the magnanimity, 
the generosity to rivals, the sublime disregard 
of money, shown by Chicago in that year of in- 
spiration and power. In the presence of that 
splendid largeheartedness, envy died; rivals 
became enthusiastic collaborators; and the re- 
sult was worthy of the lofty qualities which 
produced it. It proved the fallacy of the 
opinion, so often expressed, that beauty in art 
and architecture is a symptom of decay. We 
saw the people of a great, young, thriving 
commercial community of their own initiative 
build at enormous expense, without prospect 
or hope of pecuniary profit, the most exquisite- 
ly beautiful creation the world has yet seen. 
Happy are all we who saw it! It bloomed in 
its vast white symmetry on the shore of the 
Lake like some divine miracle of a flower— as 
perfect in beauty, as transitory in duration. It 
passed away like a dream or an exhalation. 
197 



COMMERCIAL CLUB DINNER 

But it will remain in our minds among the 
richest of our recollections, fruitful forever of 
a fonder pride of country, of a deeper respect 
for human nature. 

All these things rush to our thoughts when 
we come to Chicago, a city of so great a past, 
even in its mighty youth, and dowered with the 
certainty of a future so transcendent. Not only 
of itself, but as a type and symbol, it is worthy 
the serious attention of mankind. It symbol- 
izes not merely the strength, the resources, the 
enterprise, the multifarious activities and in- 
telligence of this magnificent State, of this 
glorious West, of this beloved and powerful 
Union of States ; but, in its highest qualities, it 
is a type of all that is freest and most master- 
ful in the spirit of the age, in the aspirations 
and progress of the world. It would be futile 
and inane to say that a community so cosmo- 
politan had not its shadows as well as its 
lights ; with the universal virtues it must have 
the faults which are universal ; it would be pre- 
sumption even to say what is right and what is 
wrong in a system of things so complex and so 
portentous. The fact transcends all theory 
and all criticism. The discords we perceive 
198 



COMMERCIAL CLUB DINNER 

may be parts of a stupendous harmony too 
great for our appreciation— a superhuman 
composition through all of which beats the 
pulse of an abounding and ever-growing life, 
the rhythm of a swelling song, whose leading 
motives are democracy, freedom and light. 



199 



NEW OELEANS 



PREPARED FOR, BUT NOT DELIVERED ON, THE OCCASION OF THE 

SECRETARY OF STATE'S VISIT TO NEW ORLEANS WITH 

PRESIDENT McKINLEY IN 1901 



NEW ORLEANS 



I AM glad of the opportunity to express in 
behalf of my colleagues, as well as my own, 
our grateful appreciation of the reception we 
have met with in this superb Southern capital. 
However your kindness may have exceeded in 
some cases our personal deserts — and I speak 
especially of myself,— I am sure that so far as 
our intentions are concerned, we have deserved 
your good will. I make bold to say that in a 
long period of observation of public affairs I 
have never known an Administration more 
anxious than the present one to promote the 
interests of every section of the country. I 
need not say where our inspiration, our direct- 
ing force, comes from. If you want to see 
an American, body and soul, through and 
through, in every fibre of his being devoted to 
203 



NEW ORLEANS 

the welfare of his country— his whole country 
—he is your Guest this evening. And as this 
genial air naturally predisposes our Northern 
hearts to expansion and confidence I will ven- 
ture to say that those of us who are with him 
are like him except in fame and ability. We 
are all Democrats, we are all Republicans, we 
are all Americans. We have no principles 
which will not equally suit the climate of Mas- 
sachusetts and that of Louisiana. Perhaps, in 
the Department with which I am more im- 
mediately concerned, we have been working 
rather more in the interest of the South than 
in that of other sections. We have done our 
best to extend your markets by reciprocal trea- 
ties and other measures, and to clear away all 
barriers to an Isthmian Canal under American 
ownership and control. We have felt it was 
time for the South to share in the general pros- 
perity, and we know every section will profit 
by what benefits one. 

Will you allow me one personal word to ex- 
press the pleasure with which I find myself 
here. My boyhood was passed on the banks 
of the Mississippi— but so vast is the extent 
of the territory traversed by this mighty river 

204 



NEW ORLEANS 

''which drains our Andes and divides a 
world," so cosmical is the range of climate 
through which it passes, that when I was 
young, its northern and southern regions 
seemed alien and strange to each- other in all 
aspects save those of patriotic national pride. 
To us for a part of the year, it was white and 
dazzling bridge, safe as a city street for sleigh- 
ing and skating; framed in by snow-clad 
bluffs ; but we loved to think that far away to 
the South it flowed through a land of perpetual 
summer, fragrant with fruits and everbloom- 
ing flowers, blessed continually with days of 
sunshine and nights of balm. We thought of 
you without envy, but with joy that your en- 
chanted land was ours also— that we, too, had 
a share in your goodly heritage. All through 
my childhood New Orleans was to me a realm 
of faery, a land of dreams. And when I grew 
older I read with delight your history and your 
literature— the one filled with romance in ac- 
tion, the other constantly distinguished by the 
touch of Southern grace and Latin art. I al- 
ways wanted to see for myself the beauty of 
this region, to study on the spot the secret of 
its charm. But the strong gods Fate and Cir- 

205 



NEW OELEANS 

cumstaiice continually prevented until this 
day. Now I have come, and found, like a 
famous queen of the East, that the half has 
never been told. I am less fortunate than Her 
Majesty of Sheba— as she was young and en- 
joyed the Oriental leisure; while I am old and 
in an American hurry. I shall always be glad, 
though, even of this tantalizing glimpse. But 
the one piece of advice I shall venture to give 
those of you who may not know the North, is, 
don't put off your visit too long. Come and 
see us while you are young— and this excludes 
nobody, for you all are young. I have never 
seen so much youth and beauty as in the last 
few days. Men who are contemporaries of 
mine, who according to the calendar and the 
army lists ought to be passing into the lean and 
slippered pantaloon, who won world-wide fame 
in the Sixties, men who fought Grant and Sher- 
man to a standstill, have the looks, the spirit 
and the speech of boys. I can only conjecture 
that they have succeeded where Ponce de Leon 
failed in discovering the fountain of PerpertuaJ 
Youth, and naturally enough, are keeping it a 
secret from the rest of us. 



206 



THE GEAND ARMY OF THE 
REPUBLIC 



ADDRESS AT THE THIRTY-SIXTH NATIONAL ENCAMPMENT, G. A. R., 
WASHINGTON, D.C., OCTOBER 6th., 1902 



THE GRAND ARMY OF THE 
REPUBLIC 



COMKADES or THE GrRAND ArMY : 

IN the name of the President and in his stead, 
I bid you welcome to Washington. I need 
not say that on every inch of American soil, 
wherever that starry banner waves, you are 
at home, and need no formal words of welcome. 
But especially in this capital city of the Repub- 
lic you fought to preserve, you are the children 
of the house ; the doors are always open to you. 
Wherever you turn, you are reminded of the 
history of which you are a part. From the 
windows of that White House the eyes of many 
comrades have looked upon this field whose 
names belong to the ages— Lincoln, Grant, 
Hayes, Garfield, Harrison, McKinley, and 
Roosevelt. In the beautiful squares other com- 
rades salute you from the bronze horses of the 
monuments where your love and loyalty have 
" 209 



THE GEAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

placed them. Across the winding river, the 
heights of Arlington show the white tents of 
Fame's eternal camping ground, where your 
friends and brothers repose. And, casting its 
gigantic shadow over this bivouac of yours, the 
unequaled obelisk of Washington towers to 
the clouds— the loftiest structure ever reared 
by man in memory of the loftiest character in 
human history. 

A peculiar interest attends this gathering. 
Never again shall all of us meet in a camp like 
this. Not often shall the youngest and strongest 
of us come together to renew our memories of 
the past, and our vows of eternal devotion to 
the cause to which in those distant days we 
swore allegiance. Thirty-seven years have 
passed since some of us, wearing crape on our 
arms and mourning in our hearts for Abraham 
Lincoln, saw the great Army which he loved 
pass before the White House in the Grand Re- 
view. Many of you marched in those dusty 
columns, keeping step to the rhythm of drums 
and trumpets which had sounded the onset in a 
hundred battles. The banners blew gaily out 
—what was left of them ; they were stained with 
the weather of long marches ; they were splen- 
210 



THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

did in the rags and tatters of glorious victories. 
There was not much of pomp or state about that 
solemn march. But the men in the street that 
day— many of whom I have the honor of seeing 
before me— afforded their own country, and 
the rest of the world, a lesson which shall never 
be forgotten, though its tremendous import 
was not immediately perceived. In fact many 
inferences were drawn at the moment which 
the lapse of a few months found altogether 
false. One trained observer of events in the 
Old World said: ''These splendid fellows will 
give you trouble ; it is too fine a force to be dis- 
banded easily." He reasoned from the pre- 
cedents of the past, unaware that we were 
making new precedents. Since then the world 
has learned the lesson of that hour. The normal 
condition of the Republic is peace, but not the 
nerveless peace of helplessness. We do not 
need the overgrown armaments of Europe. 
Our admirable regular force, with its perfect 
drill and discipline, though by far the smallest 
in the world in proportion to population, is 
sufficient for our ordinary wants; but when 
the occasion calls, when the vital interests or 
the honor of the country are threatened, when 

211 



THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

the national conscience is aroused, an army 
will spring from the soil, so vast, so docile, so 
intelligent, so formidable, that it need not fear 
to try conclusions with any army on the face 
of the earth. 

But that was only half the lesson ; the other 
half was equally important— that when that 
citizen Army has done its work, it makes no 
claim, it exacts no conditions of disbandment, 
but melts away into the vaster body of the 
nation, as the foam-crested sunlit wave melts 
back into the profound depths of the ocean. 
The great host of 1865 ceased to exist as an 
armed force ; but in every town and hamlet of 
the land it lived as a part of the body politic 
—a nucleus everywhere of courage, patriot- 
ism, and self-sacrifice. This was a new pro- 
duct the Republic might proudly show to the 
world, saying, ' ' These be the peaceable heroes 
I breed from great wars." 

There were many brilliant deeds done in the 
war that resulted in enduring fame to for- 
tunate individual soldiers; but the disband- 
ment of that army, flushed with victory and 
idolized by the country, reflected honor upon 
all our race, a glory in which individual claims 

212 



THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

are lost, like atoms of cloud in the crimson 
splendor of a stormy sunset. 

For four years you showed yourselves good 
soldiers— equal to the best the world had seen. 
For thirty-seven years you have been good 
citizens; and who shall say in which capacity 
you have wrought best for the Republic? Each 
year you come together with thinned ranks but 
undiminished spirit to feed anew the undying 
flame upon the altar of patriotism. I should 
not have said your ranks are thinned, for the 
place of each fallen comrade is filled with a 
loving memory. And who can ever forget the 
faces which never had a chance to grow old — 
the brave young warriors who fell in battle 
and gained the prize of immortal youth? For 
them there is no shadow of struggle or 
poverty; no trouble of gray hairs or failing 
strength; no care of the present nor fear of 
the future. The unfading light of morning is 
forever in their eyes ; the blessing of a grate- 
ful nation hallows their names. We salute 
them with loving tears, from which the bitter- 
ness is gone. We hear their young voices in 
the clear notes of the bugle and the murmur of 
the fluttering flags. Our answering hearts 

213 



THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

cry, ''Hail and farewell, young comrades, till 
we meet again ! ' ' 

Our fathers ordained that in this Republic 
there should be no distinctions; but human 
nature is stronger than laws, and nothing can 
prevent this people from showing honor to 
all who have deserved well of the country. 
Every man who has borne arms with credit 
has earned and is sure to receive a special 
measure of regard. And it is our peculiar 
privilege to remember that our armies and 
navies, regular and volunteer, have always 
been worthy of esteem. In distant gener- 
ations, under different flags, in conflicts great 
and small, by land and by sea, they have al- 
ways borne their part nobly. The men who 
fought at Louisburg beneath the meteor flag 
of England ; the men who stood with Washing- 
ton at Yorktown; with Lincoln in the Black 
Hawk War ; with Crockett at the Alamo ; with 
Taylor at Buena Vista ; with Grant at Vicks- 
burg; and with Lee at Appomattox were of 
the stuff of which not only soldiers, but 
citizens, are made. And in our own time the 
young men who stormed the hill of San Juan, 
and have borne our flag with such honor to 
214 



THE GRAND ARMY OF THE REPUBLIC 

the forbidden city of Pekin and the jungles of 
Luzon, have shown that their progenitors bred 
true. The men of to-day are as good Amer- 
icans as the men of yesterday, and the men of 
to-morrow, with God's blessing, will be the 
same. The dominant characteristic of every 
American army that has ever stepped to the 
tap of a drum has been valor and humanity. 
They have— in the long run— carried nothing 
but good to any land they have occupied. As 
our comrade McKinley— of blessed memory— 
said: "The flag has never floated over any 
region but in benediction." 

By order of the President of the United 
States, these historic grounds, the property 
of the Nation, are during this Encampment 
dedicated to your use. They will receive from 
your presence an added sacredness and value. 
In the history of the twentieth century, which 
is opening with such brilliant promise, not 
the least luminous page will treat of this meet- 
ing of the Grand Army of the Republic- 
soldiers and citizens whom the Republic de- 
lights to honor. 



215 



PEESIDENT EOOSEVELT 



SPEECH AT OHIO SOCIETY BANQUET, NEW YORK, 
JANUARY 17 th, 1903 



PEESIDENT ROOSEVELT 



A DISTINGUISHED American some time 
ago leaped into unmerited fame by say- 
ing, "Some men are born great— others are 
born in Ohio." This is mere tautology, for a 
man who is born in Ohio is born great. I can 
say this— as the rest of you cannot— without 
the reproach of egotism, for I have suffered 
all my life under the handicap of not having 
been bom in that fortunate commonwealth. 
Indeed, when I look back on the shifting scenes 
of my life, if I am not that altogether deplor- 
able creature, a man without a country, I am, 
when it comes to pull and prestige, almost 
equally bereft, as I am a man without a state. 
I was born in Indiana, I grew up in Illinois, 
I was educated in Rhode Island, and it is no 
blame to that scholarly community that I know 
so little. I learned my law in Springfield and 
my politics in Washington, my diplomacy in 

219 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

Europe, Asia and Africa. I have a farm in 
New Hampshire and desk room in the District 
of Columbia. When I look to the springs from 
which my blood descends the first ancestors I 
ever heard of were a Scotchman, who was half 
English, and a German woman, who was half 
French. Of my immediate progenitors, my 
mother was from New England and my father 
was from the South. In this bewilderment of 
origin and experience I can only put on an 
aspect of deep humility in any gathering of 
favorite sons, and confess that I am nothing 
but an American. After all, that is something 
to be thankful for. There is a story that, in 
the early war days, two thoughtful Mugwumps 
met — they were Mugwumps before the letter, 
for that illuminating name was not yet in- 
vented,— and one said to the other (mingling 
the mutual cuttle-cloud of their gloom), "We 
are going to the Devil." "Yes," said the 
other, "and we ought to be thankful we have 
a Devil to go to. " I am glad, if I cannot boast 
of a State, I at least have a nation to call my- 
self by. 

And yet, where a man is born is not a matter 
for personal boasting. I have never met one 
220 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

who chose his own birthplace; but the man is 
indeed fortunate who chooses the right place 
to be married in. This Mr. Hoyt and I did— 
and it is, I am sure, altogether owing to that 
lucky chance— for lucky chances are gregarious 
and like to flock together— that the greatest 
honors of our lives have come to us to-night — 
that he is your President and that I am your 
guest. 

I lived a little while in Ohio and was very 
happy there, but, obeying a call which seemed 
to me imperative, I went to Washington some 
twenty years ago. I might have been pardoned 
for thinking I had not left Ohio, for every great 
department of national activity and power was 
under the direction of a citizen of that master- 
ful state. The President was an Ohio man, 
equally ^distinguished in character and achieve- 
ments; the finances of the country were in the 
strong and capable hands of John Sherman; 
the army gladly obeyed the orders of Tecum- 
seh Sherman, with Phil Sheridan as second in 
command; while at the head of our august 
Supreme Court sat Chief Justice "VVaite; the 
Executive, the purse, the sword and the scales 
of justice, all in the hands of men from a state 
221 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

which naturally breeds men who know how to 
make war, to make money and to make laws. 

And as I ought, before I take my seat, to 
say a word at least bearing on the subject of the 
toast to which I am supposed to be responding 
—what a roll call of great names is found in 
the Presidents from Ohio. The two Harri- 
sons, old and young Tippecanoe; Grant, one 
of those simple great men for whom history 
has so sure a partiality; Hayes, the ideal re- 
publican citizen; and those twins in fate and 
fame, so like in destiny and so different in 
temperament and in methods, Garfield and 
McKinley— all Ohio men by birth or adoption, 
all illustrious in peace and war, citizens and 
soldiers, too, without reproach. 

And the list, great as it is, is still open for 
indefinite expansion. 

But I imagine your toast referred more 
especially to our actual President, our young, 
gallant, able, brilliant President Roosevelt. 
I am glad to be called on to say in his absence 
what few men would be hardy enough to say 
to his face— for, like all men of high courage 
and manliness, he is inhospitable to flattery. 
In the great roll of our Presidents— all of them 
222 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

men of mark, of lofty character and ideals, not 
one name among tliem smirched by the slight- 
est stain of personal corruption or wrongdoing, 
all of them showing to the world clean hands 
and high aims— he holds now, he will hold for- 
ever, a distinguished place. The most famous 
of German poets has said, ' ' A talent is formed 
in the solitudes, a character in the torrent of 
the world." Our President has had the ad- 
vantage of both these environments. From 
the cloistered life of American college boys, 
sheltered from the ruder currents of the world 
by the ramparts of wealth and gentle nurture, 
he passed, still very young, to the wild and free 
existence of the plains and the hills. In the 
silence of those vast solitudes men grow to full 
stature, when the original stuff is good. He 
came back to the east, bringing with him, as 
Tennyson sang, ''the wrestling thews that 
throw the world." His career since then has 
been singularly varied. He has gone rapidly 
forward and upward because that was the law 
of his being. He does not disdain the garland 
of fame, but he finds his highest enjoyment in 
grasping the tools that fit his hand. He has 
his high ideal of public work set forth by the 

223 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

greatest teaclier and ruler that ever lived, 
"Whosoever will be chief among you, let him 
be your servant." 

It does not distinguish an American Pres- 
ident to be honest, nor to be brave, nor to be 
intelligent, nor to be patriotic. They have all 
been all of these. These qualities are postu- 
lates of the position. But the nation is to be 
congratulated when all these desirable attri- 
butes are heightened and tinged with that 
ineffable light which, for want of a more de- 
scriptive term, we call genius. It is this which 
makes honesty a scorching flame against fraud 
or corruption; which makes courage an 
inspiration to others in battle or in council; 
which raises intelligence to the quick flash of 
intuition and patriotism to a religious fervor 
of consecration, and it is this which makes 
Theodore Roosevelt the man and the President 
he is. 

And, finally, I, whose memories are of a 
generation of which few survivors remain, feel 
like congratulating you who are young, in the 
words of the dying Voltaire on the eve of the 
splendors and the marvels of the French rev- 
olution, which he was not to witness, "You 
224 



PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 

young men are going to see fine things." In 
the six years which remain of President 
Roosevelt's term— if my arithmetic is wrong 
I am open to correction— you will see what a 
stout heart, an active mind, a vital intelligence, 
a wide range of experience, a passion for 
justice and truth and a devoted patriotism can 
accomplish at the head of a nation which unites 
the strength of a mighty youth to the political 
sense which is the rich inheritance of centuries 
of free government. 



15 



225 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

PREPARED FOR DELIVERY ON MR STEDMAN'S 
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY OCTOBER 8th, 1903 



EDMUND CLAKENCE STEDMAN 

I ESTEEM it a great privilege to be with 
you to-night and to be allowed to offer, if 
only by my presence, my tribute of affection 
and regard to one of my oldest and most valued 
friends. 

I am glad to congratulate him on this cheer- 
ful anniversary ; why should we not call it his 
Coming of Age! Certainly our felicitations 
have a far more sure and substantial basis than 
those which greet the young heir on his twenty- 
first birthday. In that case, how hidden in 
clouds, how shrouded in uncertainty is the 
future! No man may tell whether the days 
which confront the youth have more of blessing 
or bane, more of joy or sorrow, more of honor 
or disgrace. His fate is before him, her features 
hidden in a veil. She shows him a road, whose 
windings are wrapped in mist. Nothing can 
guarantee the exit — neither wealth, nor sta- 
tion, opportunity nor the devotion of friends. 
All these strong supports may be beaten down 
229 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

like weeds by the blows of Circumstance, or the 
stoutest defenses may be betrayed from within 
by a treachery of temperament. But on a birth- 
day like this we celebrate, the years of a man's 
life have dropped their veils of mystery; the 
book is wide open for all to read; the varied 
landscape of the long journey is revealed by 
the gentle rays of the westering sun; all the 
shadows are left behind. Happy the man who, 
like our dear and honored friend, has no favors 
to ask of the apocalyptic light; whose life is 
one consistent story of noble effort and bril- 
liant performance; who can look back on the 
past without a blush and forward to the un- 
known without a fear. 

It is a life— I will not say for our friend to 
be proud of— for we know too well the digni- 
fied and philosophic poise of his character to 
associate with it any idea of vainglory,— but 
it is a record and career of which his friends 
are justly proud. He was born a poet and he 
has lived faithful to the goddess ; but you would 
seek in vain for any sign of poetic license in his 
life. He has shown that the highest gifts are 
compatible with the most rigorous industry, 
the most stainless honor. He has never turned 
230 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

away from his ideals, nor has he ever despised 
the homely virtues of our workaday world. 
Great poet, honorable man, good citizen,— 
what better lot could any mother pray for at 
the cradle of her child? 

I began to hear of Stedman while he was 
hardly more than a boy, at a time when per- 
haps we thought more of the things of the 
spirit than we do now. The great Boston choir 
of poets was then in its meridian splendor ; a 
younger trio were singing in the Middle 
States, Taylor, Stoddard and Boker, differing 
widely in character and circumstances but 
bound together in true friendship and a gen- 
uine love of Poesy, as they liked to call it— and 
after these, with the light of an auspicious 
dawn on their shining foreheads, came the 
three young heirs of fame, Stedman and 
Aldrich and Howells. All the others have gone 
to their celestial rewards, but these three are 
happily with us to enjoy the sweetness of a 
righteous renown in the land of the living. 

I remember how in an hour Stedman grew 
famous with that Tyrtaean ballad which rang 
like a reveille in the troubled and clouded 
morning of the great war, where the poet^s 

231 



EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN 

voice gave forth the deep inspiration of the 
prophet. It was when the scaffold was build- 
ing for John Brown. I have not lost the 
sonorous refrain in forty years: 

"But, Virginians, don't do it, for I tell you that 

the flagon 
Filled with blood of John Brown's offspring was 

first poured by Southern hands, 
And each drop of old Brown's blood, like the red 

gore of the dragon. 
Shall flame a vengeful fury hissing through your 

wasted lands, 

And Old Brown— 
Ossawatomie Brown— 
Will trouble you more than ever when you've 

nailed his coffin down." 

It is not given to many prophets to read 
their prophecies, transferred from the future 
to the perfect tense, in the history of their 
times. 

As Mr. Stedman began, so he continued. 
There has not been a year of his life in which 
he has not done some good and permanent 
work in literature, made some conscientious 
and valuable contribution to criticism, borne 
some brave and cogent testimony in behalf of 
232 



EDMUND CLAEENCE STEDMAN 

good taste, good morals and good citizenship. 
The standards of this country in letters and in 
life are higher because he has lived. 

We offer him, on this day on which he be- 
gins what Victor Hugo called la jeunesse de 
la vieillesse, our heartfelt congratulations, 
in which love, admiration and gratitude 
are mingled, for all he has done and for all 
that he is. 



233 



LINCOLN'S FAITH 



REMARKS, FROM PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S PEW, ON THE 
ONE-HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTAB- 
LISHMENT OF THE NEW YORK AVENUE PRESBY- 
TERIAN CHURCH, WASHINGTON, D. C, JUSTICE 
HARLAN PRESIDING, AND PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT 
BEING ONE OF THE SPEAKERS, NOVEMBER 16th, 1902 



M 



LINCOLN'S FAITH 



R. PEESIDENT, Mr. Justice : Ladies and 
Gentlemen : I could not find it in my heart 
to detain you, at this hour, even for a moment, 
by any words of mine. But perhaps you may 
consider that you have time to listen to one or 
two phrases uttered in this city many years ago 
by that great man to whom Mr. Justice Harlan 
has just alluded. Some of you, I am sure, share 
with me the memories to which this occasion 
and place give rise, of the days when I have 
sat in this church with that illustrious patriot 
whose fame even now has turned to something 
remote and legendary. But whatever is re- 
membered or whatever lost, we ought never to 
forget that Abraham Lincoln, one of the might- 
iest masters of statecraft that history has 
known, was also one of the most devoted and 
faithful servants of Almighty God who has 
ever sat in the high places of the world. From 
237 



LINCOLN'S FAITH 

that dim and chilly dawn when, standing on a 
railway platform at Springfield half veiled by 
falling snowflakes from the crowd of friends 
and neighbors who had gathered to wish him 
God-speed on his momentous journey, he 
acknowledged his dependence on God and 
asked for their prayers, to that sorrowful yet 
triumphant hour when he went to his account, 
he repeated over and over in every form of 
speech, his faith and trust in that Almighty 
Power who rules the fate of men and of na- 
tions. To a Committee of Presbyterians who 
visited him in 1863, he said : "It has been my 
happiness to receive testimonies of a similar 
nature from, I believe, all denominations of 
Christians. This to me is most gratifying, be- 
cause from the beginning I saw that the issues 
of our great struggle depended on the Divine 
interposition and favor." A year later he 
said, among other things, to a Committee of the 
General Conference of the Methodist Church: 
*'God bless the Methodist Church; bless all the 
Churches, and blessed be God who in this our 
great trial giveth us the Churches. ' ' I will not 
multiply extracts from those hundreds of pub- 
lic utterances, nor will I quote the sublime 
238 



LINCOLN'S FAITH 

words of the Second Inaugural which sound 
like a new chapter of Hebrew prophecy; as 
these might be classed among the official 
speeches of rulers which recognize the power 
for good of the ordinary relations between re- 
ligion and wise government. But I will ask 
you— and this shall be my last word— to listen 
to a few sentences in which Mr. Lincoln admits 
us into the most secret recesses of his soul. 
It is a meditation written in September 1862. 
Perplexed and afflicted beyond the power of 
human help, by the disasters of war, the wrang- 
ling of parties, and the inexorable and con- 
straining logic of his own mind, he shut out the 
world one day, and tried to put into form his 
double sense of responsibility to human duty 
and Divine Power ; and this was the result. It 
shows— as has been said in another place— the 
awful sincerity of a perfectly honest soul, try- 
ing to bring itself into closer communion with 
its Maker. 

' ^ The will of God prevails. In great contests 
each party claims to act in accordance with the 
will of God. Both may be and one must be 
wrong. God cannot be for and against the 
same thing at the same time. In the present 
239 



LINCOLN'S FAITH 

civil war it is quite possible that God 's purpose 
is sometliing different from the purpose of 
either party ; and yet the human instrumentali- 
ties, working just as they do, are of the best 
adaptation to effect His purpose. I am almost 
ready to say that this is probably true; that 
God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not 
end yet. By His mere great power on the 
minds of the now contestants. He could have 
either saved or destroyed the Union without 
a human contest. Yet the contest began. And 
having begun, He could give the final victory 
to either side any day. Yet the contest pro- 
ceeds." 



240 



THE PRESS AND MODERN 
PROGRESS 



/U)DRESS AT THE OPENING OF THE PRESS PARLIAMENT OF THE 
WORLD, AT THE LOUISIANA PFRCHASE EXPOSITION, 
ST. LOUIS, MAY 19th, 1904 



THE PRESS AND MODERN 
PROGRESS 

I THANK you, Mr. Chairman ; I thank you, 
gentlemen— all of you— for your too gen- 
erous and amiable welcome. I esteem it a great 
privilege to meet so many representatives of 
an estate which, more than any other, at this 
hour controls the world. It is my daily duty 
in Washington to confer with the able and 
distinguished representatives of civilized sov- 
ereigns and states. But we are all aware that 
the days of personal government are gone for- 
ever ; that behind us, and behind the rulers we 
represent, there stands the vast, irresistible 
power of public opinion, which in the last resort 
must decide all the questions we discuss, and 
whose judgment is final. In your persons I 
greet the organs and exponents of that tremen- 
dous power with all the respect which is due to 
you and your constituency, deeply sensible of 

243 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

the honor which has been done me in making 
me the mouthpiece of the sentiment of ap- 
preciation and regard with which the nation 
welcomes you to this great festival of peace 
and of progress. 

It is possible— if you will pardon a per- 
sonal word from me— that the circumstances 
of my life may have commended me to the 
notice of President Francis, and may have led 
him to invite me here to-night to take part in 
this occasion in the dual capacity of host and 
guest. My years of newspaper work might 
entitle me to a modest place in your member- 
ship, while the valley of the mighty river which 
rolls by the wharves of St. Louis can never 
be considered by me otherwise than as my 
home. The years of my boyhood were passed 
on the banks of the Mississippi, and the great 
river was the scene of my early dreams. The 
boys of my day led an amphibious life in and 
near its waters in the summer time, and in the 
winter its dazzling ice bridge, of incomparable 
beauty and purity, was our favorite play- 
ground; while our imaginations were busy 
with the glamour and charm of the distant 
cities of the South, with their alluring French 
244 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

names and their legends of stirring adventure 
and pictures of perpetual summer. It was a 
land of faery, alien to us in all but a sense of 
common ownership and patriotic pride. We 
built snow forts and called them the Alamo; 
we sang rude songs of the cane-brake and the 
cornfield; and the happiest days of the year 
to us who dwelt on the northern bluifs of the 
river were those that brought us, in the loud 
puffing and whistling steamers of the olden 
time, to the Mecca of our rural fancies, the 
bright and busy metropolis of St. Louis. 

The historical value of the Mississippi is 
not less than its geographical and natural im- 
portance. Its course through the pages of our 
country's story is as significant as the tremen- 
dous sweep of its waters from the crystal lakes 
which sleep beneath the northern stars to the 
placid expanse of the Gulf of Mexico. Its 
navigation was a prize fiercely contended for 
by every chancellery of western Europe. 
Many suitors have looked upon it since that 
gallant Prince Charming, Hernando de Soto, 
parted the curtains of its repose, and all have 
found it fair. It aroused equally the interest 
of the Briton, the Iberian, and the Gaul. When 

245 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

by virtue of one of the strangest caprices of 
the great game of diplomacy ever known, it 
became our cherished possession, it gave rise 
to the fiercest political contests, the most far- 
reaching combinations. Wlien the accumulated 
passions and purposes of a hundred years at 
last burst forth in a tempest of war, it became 
the center of a world's breathless interest and 
was flooded with the fatal and terrible light 
which plays about the battlefields of fame and 
'^ shines in the sudden making of splendid 
names. ' ' 'So long as its waters roll to the sea, 
so long will the world remember the high 
resolution with which Grant and Sherman 
hewed their way southward and the chivalrous 
courage with which Johnston and Pemberton 
opposed them. So immense is the value of 
that silver bar that binds together the frame- 
work of the wedded States. 

We celebrate this year, with the generous 
assistance of a friendly world, the most im- 
portant event in the history of this great val- 
ley, an event which in far-reaching and lasting 
results is surpassed by few in the life of the 
nation. It is perhaps true that to the phil- 
osophic mind all periods are critical— that 

246 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

every hour is the end of an era and the begin- 
ning of a new order of ages. But to us 
ordinary observers there occur from time to 
time crises in history when the line of cleavage 
between the old and the new is clear and dis- 
tinct, where the aloe blooms, where the ava- 
lanche leaves the mountain top, where the 
leisurely march of events is quickened to the 
dynamic rush of irresistible destiny. The 
transfer of this imperial domain from 
European to American control was one of 
those transactions which render the period of 
their accomplishment memorable for all time. 
In no other act did the men who made the 
Revolution— ''men," as Lowell called them, 
"with empires in their brains"— more clearly 
show their marvelous prophetic insight. The 
United States was, in 1803, a feeble folk, with 
hardly enough population to occupy the long 
Atlantic seacoast ; with the great spaces of the 
Middle West scarcely yet picketed by adven- 
turous pioneers; with imperfect means of 
defense against a world which still looked 
askance at the half-known upstart which 
might prove dangerous hereafter; with the 
heavy cares incident to the building of a new 

247 



THE PEESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

nation upon yet untried foundations. But 
weighty as were their responsibilities they did 
not hesitate to assume others weightier still. 
To an undeveloped empire they seized the oc- 
casion to add another still wilder and more 
remote. Upon their half -finished task they un- 
dauntedly superimposed another full of exact- 
ing and perilous possibilities. In their robust 
faith in the future— their fearless confidence 
in the force of the new democracy— difiSculties 
were not considered and the impossible did not 
exist. To men of that strain, in an enterprise 
which promised usefulness and glory, toil and 
danger were only irresistible attractions. 

While we should give due credit to the in- 
dividual instrumentalities by which this great 
transaction was brought about, we should not 
forget the overwhelming influence exerted by 
the unseen Director of the Drama. Whether 
we call it the spirit of the age, or historic 
necessity, or the balance of power, or whether 
we reverently recognize in the matter the hand 
of that Providence which watched over our in- 
fancy as a people, we can not but admit that 
the acquisition of this vast territory was, in 
one way or another, sure to come. A wise 

248 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

diplomacy hastened it; a timid conservatism 
might have delayed it; but it was written in 
our horoscope. The surest proof of this lies 
in the eminent personalities by whom the pur- 
chase and sale were made. Jefferson was the 
last man in America of whom we could have 
expected this departure on the field of illimit- 
able expansion, and Napoleon was, of all the 
sovereigns of Europe, the least likely to give 
up so vast an extent of empire. 

One of the most brilliant and tenacious 
dreams of Bonaparte was to establish on the 
right bank of the Mississippi a Latin empire 
reaching from the Gulf to the Pacific Ocean, 
extending in future ages the glories of France 
to the sunset seas. The principle dearest to 
the heart of Jefferson was that of a strict con- 
struction of the Constitution, which in his view 
forbade the exercise by the General Govern- 
ment of anything but expressly delegated 
powers. It would have seemed like a contra- 
diction in terms to expect either of these 
statesmen to agree upon a proposition which 
radically contravened the inmost convictions 
of each of them. But the nature of things was 
more powerful than either a Bonaparte or a 

249 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

Jefferson. No human influence could have 
controlled either of them, but the stars in their 
courses were still stronger, and they gladly 
obeyed the mandate of fate, which was in each 
case the mandate of an enlightened patriot- 
ism. France, divesting herself of this rich in- 
cumbrance, was the better fitted for the su- 
preme gladiatorial effort that awaited her, and 
Jefferson gained an immortal fame by pre- 
ferring an immense benefit to his country to 
consistency in a narrow construction of the 
written law. 

No man, no party, can fight with any chance 
of final success against a cosmic tendency; no 
cleverness, no popularity, avails against the 
spirit of the age. In obeying that invincible 
tendency, against all his political convictions, 
Jefferson secured a conspicuous place in his- 
tory; while the Federalist politicians who 
should have welcomed this signal illustration 
and proof of the truth of their theory of the 
power of the Government they had framed, 
through the influence of party spirit faltered 
in their faith and brought upon their party a 
lasting eclipse through their failure to discern 
the signs of the times. President Roosevelt, 

250 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

in tlie memorable address with which he de- 
dicated last year this exhibition, used, in rela- 
tion to this subject, these striking words: ''As 
is so often the case in nature, the law of devel- 
opment of a living organism showed itself in 
its actual workings to be wiser than the wis- 
dom of the wisest. ' ' 

A glance at the map of Europe gives an idea 
of the vastness of this acquisition. It covers 
a space greater that that occupied by France, 
Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, and 
Portugal; it overlaps the familiar world of 
history and literature. In its ample field grew 
up fourteen of our Commonwealths ; a taxable 
wealth of seven thousand millions of dollars 
accumulated there and a population of sixteen 
million souls have there found their home, 
drawn not only from our elder communities, 
but from the teeming hives of humanity— the 
officinae gentium— in every land beneath the 
quickening sun. 

But more important than the immense 
material increase in the extent and resources 
of the new Republic was this establishment of 
the principle, thus early in its career, that it 
was to assume no inferior position to other 

251 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

nations in its power to acquire territory, to 
extend its influence— in short, to do all that 
any independent, self-respecting power might 
do which was in accord with public morals, 
conducive to the general welfare, and not pro- 
hibited by the Constitution. Though the Fed- 
eralists failed to embrace this great oppor- 
tunity and thereby brought upon their party 
an Iliad of woes, the precedent had been set 
for all time for their successors. The nation 
had outgrown its swaddling clothes. Even 
the most impassioned advocates of strict con- 
struction felt this time that it was the letter 
that killeth and the spirit that giveth life. The 
nation moved on its imperial course. The new 
chart and compass were in our hands. The 
national principle once established, other 
things were naturally added unto us. Lewis 
and Clarke, following and illustrating the 
great law of westerly migration, pushed 
through the wilderness and planted our ban- 
ners by the shores of the Peaceful Sea. In the 
process of years Texas and the wide expanse 
of New Mexico came to us, and California, 
bringing a dower of the countless riches that 
for unknown ages had veined her hills. Even 

252 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

the shores of the ocean could not long check 
the Eagle in his marvelous flight. The isles 
of the uttermost seas became his stepping- 
stones. 

This, gentlemen, is the lesson which we are 
called to contemplate amid the courts and the 
palaces of this universal exhibition ; that when 
a nation exists, founded in righteousness and 
justice, whose object and purposes are the 
welfare of humanity, the things which make 
for its growth and the increase of its power, 
so long as it is true to its ideals, are sure to 
come to pass, no matter what political theories 
or individual sentiments stand in the way. 
The common good will ultimately prevail, 
though it ^'mock the counsels of the wise and 
the valor of the brave." I know what snares 
may lie in this idea— how it may serve as the 
cry of demagogues and the pretext for despots. 
Woe be unto the nation which misuses it! but 
shame and disaster is also the portion of those 
who fear to follow its luminous beaconing. 

From every part of the world you have 
gathered to share in this secular festival of 
historic memories. You represent not only 
the world-wide community of intelligence, but 

253 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

the wonderful growth in these modern days 
of universal sympathy and good will— what 
our poet Bayard Taylor, speaking on a similar 
occasion in Vienna, and adding, I believe, a 
new word to the German language, called 
Weltgemuethlichkeit. Of all the phenomena 
of the last hundred years there is none more 
wonderful than that increase of mutual know- 
ledge which has led inevitably to a correspond- 
ing increase in mutual toleration and esteem. 
The credit of this great advance in civilization 
belongs to the press of the world. It is true 
that it is the modest boast of modern diplomacy 
that its office is the removal of misunderstand- 
ings—that, so far as intentions go, its ways are 
pleasantness and its paths are peace ; but how 
slight are the results that the best-intentioned 
diplomat can attain in this direction, compared 
with the illuminating blaze of light which the 
press each morning radiates on the universe! 
We can not claim that the light is all of one 
color, nor that there are not many angles of 
refraction; but, from this endless variety of 
opinion and assertion, truth at last emerges, 
and every day adds something to the world's 
knowledge of itself. There is a wise French 

254 



THE PKESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

proverb, "to understand is to pardon," and 
every step of progress which the peoples of 
the earth make in their comprehension of each 
other's conditions and motives is a step for- 
ward in the march to the goal desired by men 
and angels, of universal peace and brother- 
hood. 

Upon none of the arts or professions has the 
tremendous acceleration of progress in recent 
years had more effect than upon that of which 
you are the representatives. We easily grow 
used to miracles ; it will seem a mere common- 
place when I say that all the wonders of the 
magicians invented by those ingenious oriental 
poets who wrote the Arabian Nights, pale be- 
fore the stu]3endous facts which you handle in 
your daily lives. The air has scarcely ceased 
to vibrate with the utterances of kings and 
rulers in the older realms, when their words 
are read in the streets of St. Louis and on 
the farms of Nebraska. The telegraph is too 
quick for the calendar ; you may read in your 
evening paper a dispatch from the antipodes 
with a date of the following day. The details 
of a battle on the shores of the Hermit King- 
dom—a land which a few years ago was 

255 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

hidden in the mists of legend— are printed and 
commented on before the blood of the wounded 
has ceased to flow. Almost before the smoke 
of the conflict has lifted we read the obituaries 
of the unsepultured dead. And not only do 
you record with the swiftness of thought these 
incidents of war and violence, but the daily 
victories of truth over error, of light over 
darkness; the spread of commerce in distant 
seas, the inventions of industry, the discoveries 
of science, are all placed instantly within the 
knowledge of millions. The seeds of thought, 
perfected in one climate, blossom and fructify 
under every sky, in every nationality which 
the sun visits. 

With these miraculous facilities, with this 
unlimited power, comes also an enormous res- 
ponsibility in the face of God and man. I am 
not here to preach to you a gospel whose les- 
sons are known to you far better than to me. 
I am not calling sinners to repentance, but I 
am following a good tradition in stirring up 
the pure minds of the righteous by way of 
remembrance. It is well for us to reflect on 
the vast import, the endless chain of results, 
of that globe-encircling speech you address 
256 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

each day to the world. Your winged words 
have no fixed flight; like the lightning, they 
traverse the ether according to laws of their 
own. They light in every clime ; they influence 
a thousand different varieties of minds and 
manners. How vastly important is it, then, 
that the sentiments they convey should be 
those of good will rather than of malevolence, 
those of national concord rather than of pre- 
judice, those of peace rather than of hostility. 
The temptation to the contrary is almost irre- 
sistible. I acknowledge with contrition how 
often I have fallen by the way. It is far more 
amusing to attack than to defend, to excite 
than to soothe. But the highest victory of 
great power is that of self-restraint, and it 
would be a beneficent result of this memorable 
meeting, this oecumenical council of the press, 
if it taught us all— the brethren of this mighty 
priesthood— that mutual knowledge of each 
other which should modify prejudices, restrain 
acerbity of thought and expression, and tend 
in some degree to bring in that blessed time 

"When light shall spread, and man be liker man 
Through all the seasons of the Golden Year. 

" 257 



THE PBESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

What better school was ever seen in which 
to learn the lesson of mutual esteem and for- 
bearance, than this great exposition? The 
nations of the earth are met here in friendly 
competition. The first thing that strikes the 
visitor is the infinite diversity of thought and 
effort which characterizes the several exhibits ; 
but a closer study every day reveals a re- 
semblance of mind and purpose more mar- 
velous still. Integrity, industry, the intelligent 
adaptation of means to ends, are everywhere 
the indispensable conditions of success. Hon- 
est work, honest dealing, these qualities mark 
the winner in every part of the world. The 
artist, the poet, the artisan, and the statesman, 
they everywhere stand or fall through the 
lack or the possession of similar qualities. 
How shall one people hate or despise another 
when we have seen how like us they are in 
most respects, and how superior they are in 
some! Why should we not revert to the an- 
cient wisdom which regarded nothing human 
as alien, and to the words of Holy Writ which 
remind us that the Almighty has made all men 
brethren ! 

In the name of the President— writer, 

258 



THE PRESS AND MODERN PROGRESS 

soldier, and statesman, eminent in all three 
professions and in all equally an advocate of 
justice, peace, and good will,— I bid you a 
cordial welcome, with the prayer that this 
meeting of the representatives of the world's 
intelligence may be fruitful in advantage to 
the press of all nations, and may bring us 
somewhat nearer to the dawn of the day of 
peace on earth and good will among men. Let 
us remember that we are met to celebrate the 
transfer of a vast empire from one nation to 
another without the firing of a shot, without 
the shedding of one drop of blood. If the press 
of the world would adopt and persist in the 
high resolve that war should be no more, the 
clangor of arms would cease from the rising 
of the sun to its going down, and we could 
fancy that at last our ears, no longer stunned 
by the din of armies, might hear the morning 
stars singing together and all the sons of God 
shouting for joy. 



259 



FIFTY YEARS OF THE 
REPUBLICAN PARTY 

JACKSON, MICHIGAN, JULY 6th, 1904 



FIFTY YEARS OF THE 
REPUBLICAN PARTY 

ACEXTUEY is but a moment of history; 
it has often happened that several of 
them have passed away, since men began to 
record their deeds, with little change in the 
physical aspect or the moral progress of the 
world. But at other times— of intense action 
and spiritual awakening— a single generation 
may form an epoch ; and few periods of equal 
duration in political annals have been so 
crowded with great events as the fifty years we 
celebrate to-day. Under the oaks of Jackson, 
on the 6th of July, 1854, a party was brought 
into being and baptized, which ever since has 
answered the purposes of its existence with 
fewer follies and failures and more magnificent 
achievements than ordinarily fall to the lot of 
any institution of mortal origin. And even 
the beginning of the end is not yet. This 
historic party is only now in the full matarity 

263 



FIFTY YEAKS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

of its power and its capacity for good. We 
look back upon a past of unparalleled useful- 
ness and glory with emotions of thankfulness 
and pride; we confront the future and its 
exacting problems with a confidence born of 
the experience of difficulties surmounted and 
triumphs achieved in paths more thorny and 
ways more arduous than any that are likely to 
challenge the courage and the conscience of 
the generation which is to follow us. It is meet 
that at this stage of our journey we should 
review the past and read its lessons, and in 
its light take heart for what lies beyond. 

The Republican party had a noble origin. It 
sprang directly from an aroused and indignant 
national conscience. Questions of finance, of 
political economy, of orderly administration, 
passed out of sight for the moment, to be taken 
up and dealt with later on. But in 1854 the 
question that brought the thinking men to- 
gether was whether there should be a limit to 
the aggressions of slavery; and in 1861 that 
solemn inquiry turned to one still more por- 
tentous, 'Should the nation live or die? The 
humblest old Republican in America Jias the 
right to be proud that in the days of his youth 

264 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

in the presence of these momentous questions 
he judged right; and if he is sleeping in his 
honored grave his children may justly be glad 
of his decision. 

It was not so easy fifty years ago to take 
sides against the slave power as it may seem 
to-day. Respect for the vested rights of the 
Southern people was one of our most sacred 
traditions. It was founded on the compromises 
of the Constitution, and upon a long line of 
legal and legislative precedents. The men of 
the Revolution made no defense of slavery in 
itself; Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and 
Franklin deplored its existence, but recognized 
the necessity of compromise until the public 
mind might rest in the hope of its ultimate ex- 
tinction. But after they had passed away, im- 
provements in the culture and manufacture of 
cotton made this uneconomic form of labor for 
the time profitable, and what had been merely 
tolerated as a temporary necessity began to 
be upheld as a permanent system. Slavery 
entrenched itself in every department of our 
public life. Its advocates dominated Congress 
and the State legislatures; they even invaded 
the pulpit and grotesquely wrested a few texts 

265 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

of scripture to their purpose. They gave the 
tone to society; even the Southern accent was 
imitated in our schools and colleges. 

If the slaveholders had been content with 
their unquestioned predominance, they might 
for many years have controlled our political 
and social world. It was natural for the con- 
servative people of the North to say : * * We de- 
plore the existence of slavery, but we are all 
to blame for it; we should not cast upon our 
brethren in the South the burdens and perils 
of its abolition. We must bear with the un- 
fortunate condition of things and take our 
share of its inconveniences." But the slave- 
holding party could not rest content. The an- 
cients said that madness was the fate of those 
judged by the gods. Continual aggression is 
a necessity of a false position. They felt in- 
stinctively that if their system were per- 
manently to endure it must be extended, and to 
attain this object they were ready to risk 
everything. They rent in twain the comprom- 
ises which had protected them so long. They 
tore down the bulwarks which had at once 
restricted and defended them ; and confiding in 
their strength and our patience, they boldly 

266 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 
announced and inaugurated the policy of the 
indefinite extension of their ''peculiar insti- 
tution. ' ' 

Once embarked upon this fatal enterprise 
they left nothing undone which could contri- 
bute to the catastrophe upon which they were 
rushing. The Whig party had gone to ruin in 
1852 on account of the impossibility of com- 
bining the scattered elements of opposition to 
the party of pro-slavery aggression ; but they 
themselves furnished the weapon which was to 
defeat them. In May, 1854, after several 
months of passionate debate, to which the 
country listened with feverish interest, Con- 
gress passed the bill organizing the Territories 
of Kansas and Nebraska, omitting the restric- 
tions of the Missouri Compromise which ex- 
cluded slavery from them. This action at once 
precipitated the floating anti-slavery sentiment 
of the country. A mighty cry of resolute in- 
dignation arose from one end of the land to 
the other. The hollow truce, founded upon the 
legitimate compromises which had been ob- 
served in good faith by one side and ruthlessly 
violated by the other, was at an end. Men be- 
gan to search their consciences instead of the 

267 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

arguments of political expediency. A discus- 
sion of the right and wrong of slavery became 
general ; the light was let in, fatal to darkness. 
A system which degraded men, dishonored 
women, deprived little children of the sacred 
solace of home, was doomed from the hour it 
passed into the arena of free debate. And even 
if we shut our eyes to the moral aspects of that 
heartless system, and confined ourselves to the 
examination of its economic merits, it was 
found to be wasteful and inefficient. The 
Americans are at once the most sentimental 
and the most practical of peoples— and when 
they see that an institution is morally revolt- 
ing, and, besides, does not pay, its fate is 
sealed. 

Yet the most wonderful feature of that 
extraordinary campaign which then began, 
and which never ceased until the land was 
purged of its deadly sin, was that even in the 
very ' ' tempest and whirlwind of their passion ' ' 
the great leaders of the Republican party kept 
their agitation strictly within the limits of the 
Constitution and the law. There was no gen- 
eral demand for even an amendment to the 
organic instrument. They pleaded for the 

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FIFTY TEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

repeal of unjust statutes as inconsistent with 
the Constitution, but did not advocate their 
violation. Only among the more obscure and 
ardent members of the party was there any 
demand for the abolition of slavery, but the 
whole party stood like a rock for the principle 
that the damnable institution must be content 
with what it had already got, and must not be 
allowed to pollute another inch of free soil. On 
this impregnable ground they made their 
stand; and the mass convention which as- 
sembled here in 1854, while the vibrations of 
the thunder of the guns and the shoutings of 
the birthday of Liberty yet lingered in the air, 
gave a nucleus and a name to the new party, 
destined to a great and beneficent career. Be- 
fore the month ended, the anti-slavery men of 
five more great States adopted the name ''Re- 
publican," and under that banner Congress 
was carried and two years later a national 
party assembled at Pittsburg and nominated 
Fremont and Dayton, who failed by a few 
votes of sweeping the North. 

Who of us that was living then will ever for- 
get the ardent enthusiasm of those days? It 
was one of those periods, rare in the life of any 
nation, when men forget themselves and, in 

269 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

spite of habit, of interest, and of prejudice, 
follow their consciences wherever they may 
lead. In the clear, keen air that was abroad, 
the best men in the country drew deeper 
breaths and rose to a moral height they had 
not before attained. The movement was uni- 
versal. Sumner in the East, Seward in New 
York, Chase in Ohio, Bates in Missouri, Blair 
in Maryland, all sent forth their identical ap- 
peal to the higher motive; and in Illinois, 
where the most popular man in the State bold- 
ly and cynically announced, "I don't care 
whether slavery is voted up or voted down," 
a voice, new to the nation, replied, ' ' There are 
some of us who do care. If slavery is not 
wrong, nothing is wrong"— and Abraham Lin- 
coln came upon the field not to leave it until 
he was triumphant in death. 

I have no right to detain you at this hour in 
recounting the history of those memorable 
days. Two incidents of the long battle will 
never be forgotten. One was the physical and 
political contest for the possession of Kansas, 
carried on with desperate courage and reck- 
lessness of consequences by the pro-slavery 
party on the one side, and, on the other, by the 

270 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

New England farmers whose weapons of ag- 
gression were Bible texts and the words of 
Jefferson, and whose arms of defense were 
'Sharpe's rifles. With words that ring even now 
when we read them, like the clashing of swords, 
the Slave State men claimed Kansas as their 
right and the Free State men replied in the 
words of the prophet before Herod, It is not 
lawful for you to have her. And when the 
talking sharpened to the physical clinch, the 
praying men fought with the same ferocity as 
the men who cursed. In the field of political 
discussion the most dramatic incident of the 
fight was the debate between Lincoln and 
Douglas. Not many of you saw that battle of 
the strong, where each of the gladiators had 
an adversary worthy of his steel, where the 
audiences were equally divided, where the 
combatants were fairly matched in debating 
skill and address, and where the superiority 
of Lincoln was not so much personal as it was 
in the overwhelming strength of his position. 
He was fighting for freedom and could say so ; 
Douglas was fighting for slavery and could not 
avow it. The result of the contest is now seen 
to have been inevitable. Douglas was reelected 

271 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

to the Senate but had gained also the resentful 
suspicion of the South, which two years later 
disowned him and defeated his lifelong am- 
bition. Lincoln became at once the foremost 
Republican of the West and a little later the 
greatest political figure of the century. 

If there is one thing more than another in 
which we Republicans are entitled to a legiti- 
mate pride, it is that Lincoln was our first 
President; that we believed in him, loyally 
supported him while he lived, and that we have 
never lost the right to call ourselves his fol- 
lowers. There is not a principle avowed by 
the Republican party to-day which is out of 
harmony with his teachings or inconsistent 
with his character. We do not object to our 
opponents quoting him, praising him — even 
claiming him as their own. If it is not sincere, 
it is still a laudable tribute to acknowledged 
excellence. If it is genuine, it is still better, 
for even a Nebraska Populist who reads his 
Lincoln is in the way of salvation. But only 
those who believe in human rights and are 
willing to make sacrifices to defend them ; who 
believe in the nation and its beneficent power; 
who believe in the American system of protec- 

272 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

tion championed by a long line of our greatest 
and best, running back from McKinley to 
Washington, and, as Senator Dolliver so truth- 
fully said, "to the original sources of Amer- 
ican common sense"; only those who believe in 
equal justice to labor and to capital ; in honest 
money and the right to earn it, have any title 
to name themselves by the name of Lincoln, or 
to claim a moral kinship with that august and 
venerated spirit. I admit it would be little less 
than sacrilege to try to trade upon that benig- 
nant Renown, whose light *' folds in this orb 
' the earth. ' ' But we who have always tried 
to walk in the road he pointed out can not be 
deprived of the tender pride of calling our- 
selves his disciples, and of doing in his name 
the work allotted to us by Providence. And I 
hope I am violating neither the confidence of 
a friend nor the proprieties of an occasion like 
this when I refer to the ardent and able young 
statesman who is now, and is to be, our Presi- 
dent, to let you know that in times of doubt and 
difficulty the thought oftenest in his heart is, 
''What, in such a case, would Lincoln have 
done?" 

As we are removed further and further from 

^» 273 



FIFTY YEAES OF EEPUBLICAN PARTY 

the founders of our party and their mighty 
work, their names and their fame rise every 
year higher in the great perspective of history. 
The clamor of hatred and calumny dies away. 
The efforts made to weaken the hands of Lin- 
coln and his associates are forgotten. The sur- 
vivors of those who so bitterly attacked him 
and his cause, which was the cause of the 
country, are now themselves astonished when 
confronted with the words they then uttered. 
But it was against a political opposition not 
less formidable and efficient than the armed 
force beyond the Potomac that the Union men 
of that day, and their President, had to strug- 
gle. It was not merely the losses in battle, the 
waste of our wealth, the precious blood of our 
young men, that filled Lincoln's heart with 
anguish and made him old before his time, but 
it was the storm of partisan hostility that 
raged against him, filling the air with slanders 
and thwarting his most earnest and unselfish 
efforts for the country's good. But in spite of 
it all he persevered, never for a moment 
tempted by the vast power he wielded to any 
action not justified by the moral and the or- 
ganic law. I have always liked the inscription 
on the medal which the workmen of France, by 

274 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

one-cent subscriptions, caused to be struck 
after his death : ' ' Abraham Lincoln, the honest 
man. Waged war. Abolished slavery. Twice 
elected President without veiling the face of 
Liberty. ' ' This was an achievement new to the 
world : that a man and a party, armed with an 
authority so unquestioned and so stupendous, 
in the very current of a vast war, should have 
submitted themselves so rigidly to the law— 
and never have dreamed there was anything 
meritorious about it. Then, if never before, 
we proved we were as fit to be free as the men 
who achieved our freedom. 

The world learned other lessons in swift suc- 
cession. We disbanded our army— sent them 
home to earn their livings as simple citizens 
of the land they had saved, without terms or 
conditions: they asked none; they wanted 
peace; they were glad to get to work. And 
there were no reprisals, not a man punished 
for rebellion or treason ; not an act of violence 
sullied the glory of victory. The fight had 
been fierce, but loyal; we at least wished the 
reconciliation to be perfect. Then came the 
paying of our debts. To whom is the credit 
due of that enormous task, that sublime effort 
of common honesty, if not to the party which 
275 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

against every assault of open and covert re- 
pudiation stood by the country's honor and 
kept it free from stain? 

Let me hurriedly enumerate a few of the 
events in the long and fruitful career of the 
Republican party which seem to us to entitle 
it to the confidence of the country and the final 
approval of history. After the war was ended 
and peace reestablished with no damage to the 
structure of the Government, but, on the con- 
trary, with added strength and with increased 
guaranties of its perpetuity, it remained to be 
shown whether the power and success of the 
Republican party were to be permanent, or 
whether, born of a crisis, it was fitted to cope 
with the problems of daily national life. It 
had destroyed slavery, or, perhaps we might 
better say, it had created the conditions by 
which slavery had committed suicide. In the 
absence of this great adversary, could the 
party hold together against the thousand lesser 
evils that beset the public life of modern 
peoples— the evils of ignorance, corruption, 
avarice, and lawlessness, the prejudices of race 
and of class, the voices of demagognies, the 
cunning of dishonest craft, the brutal tyranny 
276 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

of the boss, the venality of the mean! I think 
it is not too much to say that the last forty 
years have given an answer, full of glory and 
honor, to that question. The Republican party, 
in the mass and in detail, has shown its capacity 
to govern. By the homestead law, with equal 
generosity and wisdom, it distributed the im- 
mense national domain among the citizens who 
were willing to cultivate it and who have con- 
verted wide stretches of wilderness into 
smiling homes. It built the Pacific Railroad, 
which has bound the Union together from East 
to West by bands of steel and made the States 
beyond the mountains among our most loyal 
and prosperous commonwealths. It redeemed 
our paper currency and made all our forms of 
money of exactly equal value, and our credit 
the best in the world. By persistent honesty in 
our finances— in the face of obstacles which 
might have daunted the hardiest statesmen — 
it has reduced our interest charges so that in 
any mart on earth we can borrow money 
cheaper than any other people. In the financial 
revulsions to which all communities are sub- 
ject, we are able, thanks to our laws and our 
administrative system, to meet and pass the 
277 



FIFTY YEARS OF EEPUBLICAN PARTY 

most violent crises without lasting damage to 
our prosperity. We have, by the patient labor 
of years, so succeeded in reforming and regu- 
lating our civil service that patronage has al- 
most ceased to cast its deadly blight upon the 
work of our public servants. Human nature 
is weak and offenses happen; but they are 
almost always found out and are punished 
without mercy when detected. By persistent 
adherence to the policy of protection, we have 
given to our industries a development which 
the fathers of the Republic never dreamed of; 
which, besides supplying our home market, has 
carried our manufactures to , the uttermost 
ends of the earth. 

History affords no parallel to the vast and 
increasing prosperity which this country has 
enjoyed under Republican rule. I hasten to 
say we do not claim to have invented seedtime 
and harvest, and industry and thrift. We 
are a great people and success is our right; 
God is good to those who behave themselves. 
But we may justly claim that the Republican 
party has been in power during these years of 
marvelous growth, and we can at least bring 
proof that we have not prevented it— and this 
278 



FIFTY YEAES OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

is no slight honor for a party to claim. I will 
not at this moment speak of the important ac- 
quisitions of territory we have made, which 
render ns in many ways the predominant 
power in the Pacific. But out of the territory 
we already possessed, fourteen new States 
have entered the Union. The census of 
1850 gave us 23,000,000 of population— the 
last one, 76,000,000. The number of our farms 
—the total of our cultivated acreage— has in- 
creased fourfold. Our corn crop is five times 
what it was ; our wheat crop, six times. The 
capital invested in manufacturing has grown 
from five hundred millions to ten billions^ 
where it employed less than a million artisans, 
it now employs more than five millions; and 
while the number of workingmen has increased 
five times, their wages have increased tenfold. 
The value of manufactured property is thir- 
teen times what it was when the Republicans of 
Michigan met under the oaks. The real and 
personal wealth of the country has grown in 
this amazing half century from seven thousand 
millions to ninety-four thousand millions. Our 
railroads have grown from a mileage of 16,000 
to one of 200,000. Our imports and exports 
279 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

have gone up by leaps and bounds to the same 
monstrous proportions. And finally, let us 
hasten to say, as the other side will say it for 
us, instead of the $47,000,000 which supplied 
our modest needs in 1850 we now collect and 
spend some $700,000,000 annually. I can only 
add what Speaker Reed replied to a Demo- 
cratic statesman who complained of a billion- 
dollar Congress : ' ' Well ! this is a billion-dollar 
country. ' ' 

Of course our opponents, who have got far 
enough from the men and the events of the 
great war period to admit they were not with- 
out merit, will say— for they must say some- 
thing—that we have fallen away from that high 
level. Now, I am grieved to confess that I am 
old enough to have seen something of the be- 
ginning, as well as of the present, of Repub- 
lican Administrations, and I venture to say that 
no eight years of government in our history 
have been purer from blame or have conferred 
greater benefits upon the country than the eight 
years of McKinley and Roosevelt which claim 
your approval to-day. I need not hesitate to 
refer to it, although I have been associated 
with both Administrations; so little of their 
280 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

merit is mine that I may speak of tliem without 
false modesty. Our national finances have 
never in our history been so wisely and suc- 
cessfully administered ; our credit never stood 
on a basis so broad and so strong. Our two- 
percents command a premium in all markets— 
no other country on earth can say as much. 
We paid abroad the other day fifty millions of 
gold in a single transaction without producing 
a ripple in exchange. The vast expenditure 
made necessary by our enormous increase in 
every element of national growth is collected 
with the utmost ease and expended with per- 
fect honesty. Our protective system, loyally 
and intelligently carried out and improved in 
the last seven years, not only fills our Treas- 
ury with the means of national expenditure, 
but has carried our industries and our com- 
merce to a height of prosperity which is the 
wonder and envy of our neighbors, who are 
trying to emulate our progress. In the re- 
lations between labor and capital, always a 
subject of deep concern in democratic govern- 
ments, we have improved both in the letter and 
the spirit. How could it be otherwise when 
labor knows that McKinley and Roosevelt have 
281 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

watched over its interests as a brother might, 
and capital knows that its rights will be sac- 
redly guarded so long as it is true to its duties ? 
As to our place in the world it has simply 
followed and naturally complemented the 
steady improvement in our domestic condi- 
tion. A country growing so fast must have 
elbowroom— must have its share of the sun- 
shine. In the last seven years, without ag- 
gression, without undue self-assertion, we have 
taken the place that belongs to us. Adhering 
with religious care to the precepts of Wash- 
ington and the traditions of a century, and 
avoiding all entangling alliances, professing 
friendship to all nations and partiality to 
none, McKinley and Roosevelt have gone 
steadily forward protecting and extending 
American interests everywhere and gaining, 
by deserving it, the good will of all the world. 
Their advice has been constantly sought and 
sparingly given. By constant iteration their 
policy has been made plain. We do not covet 
the territory nor the control of any other 
people. We hold ourselves absolutely apart 
from any combinations or groups of powers. 
We favor no national interests but our own. Iii 
282 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

controversies among onr neighbors we take no 
part, not even tendering good offices unless at 
the request of both parties concerned. When 
our advice is given, it is always on the side of 
peace and conciliation. We have made, it is 
true, great acquisitions, but never of set pur- 
pose nor from greed of land. In the case of Ha- 
waii, the will of the people of those islands co- 
incided with the important interests we have 
to guard in the Pacific. In the Samoan treaty 
we freed ourselves from a useless and danger- 
ous entanglement, and in place of an undesir- 
able condominium we gained possession of the 
best harbor in the South Seas, retaining, at 
the same time, all our commercial rights in 
the archipelago. The diplomacy of McKinley 
and Roosevelt has been directed principally 
to our present and future interests in the Pa- 
cific, on whose wide shores so much of the 
world's work is to be done. They have con- 
stantly kept in view the vast importance of that 
opening field of our activities. The long ne- 
gotiations for the ^^open door" in China; the 
steadfast fight we made for the integrity of 
that ancient Empire; President McKinley 's at- 
titude throughout the Boxer troubles, so se- 
283 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

verely criticized at the time and so splendidly 
approved by the results; the position Presi- 
dent Roosevelt has since held and now holds 
in regard to the neutrality of China in the pres- 
ent war — have all been dictated by one consis- 
tent policy, of taking care that our interests 
receive no detriment in the Pacific ; that while 
we wish no harm to anyone else, we shall see 
that no damage is done to our people, no door 
is shut in our face. 

The negotiations begun by McKinley and 
successfully completed by Roosevelt for the ab- 
rogation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, which 
impeded our freedom of action in building an 
Isthmian canal, was a part of the same gen- 
eral plan of opening a field of enterprise in 
those distant regions where the Far West be- 
comes the Far East. In this matter we were 
met in the most frank and friendly spirit by 
the British Government, as also in the matter 
of the Alaskan boundary, which was settled 
for all time by a high judicial tribunal re- 
moving a cloud upon our title to another great 
Pacific possession. And to close this record 
of success— monotonous because gained by ap- 
peals to reason rather than force, without 
284 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

parade or melodrama — came tlie treaty with 
Panama, by which we finally gained the path- 
way across the Isthmus by a perpetual grant, 
ensuring the construction of an American 
canal under American control, built primarily 
for American needs, but open on equal terms 
to all the people of good will the world over. 

All the foreign policy of McKinley and 
Roosevelt has been marked with the same 
stamp of honesty and fair dealing, confessedly 
in American interests, but treating our friends 
with equity and consideration. They have 
made more treaties than any two preceding 
Presidents; and the conclusion of the whole 
matter is that we stand to-day in independent 
though amicable relations to all the rest of the 
world— without an ally and without an enemy. 

If the Government for the last seven years 
had done nothing else, it would have entitled 
itself to an honorable place in history by the 
manner in which it has handled the questions 
of the islands whose destiny has been so inter- 
woven with our own. The war with Spain was 
carried through with incredible swiftness and 
energy, without a shadow of corruption, with- 
out a moral or a technical fault. A hundred 
285 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

days sufficed for the fighting. Diplomacy then 
did its work, and our commissioners brought 
home a treaty so just and so beneficial that it 
was impossible to unite the opposition against 
it. Then came the far more difficult and 
delicate task of administration. You remember 
the doleful prophecies of evil with which the 
air was filled; that we had not the habit nor 
the ability to govern outlying possessions ; that 
the islands would be cesspools of jobbery and 
fraud; that the enterprise was conceived in 
violence and would go out in disaster. And 
now you know the result. The Republic never 
is in default of men to serve it worthily when 
the Chief of the State is honest and able ; when 
he has the eye and the will to choose the best 
men and will be satisfied with no less. So in 
Cuba, Porto Rico, and the Philippines we got 
the best we had. Wood, Allen and Hunt, and 
Taft have each in his place wrought a great 
work and gained a righteous fame. Cuba and 
Porto Rico are free and enjoying— the one 
under her own banner, the other under the 
Stars and Stripes— a degree of prosperity and 
happiness never known before in all their 
troubled story. 

286 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

As to the Philippines, the work done there 
by Judge Taft and his associates will rank 
among the highest achievements of colonial 
administration recorded in history. Never 
since their discovery has there been such 
general peace and order; so thorough a 
protection of the peaceable and restraint of 
evil doers ; so wide a diffusion of education ; 
so complete a guaranty to industry of the fruit 
of its labors. And when they see this energetic 
and efficient government carried on, free from 
the venality and bribery which formerly 
seemed to them a necessity of existence, then, 
indeed, they are like them that dream. The 
principal evil from which they still suffer has 
its origin here. Some well-meaning people— ^ )=^:Pi^'^iF' 
and others not so well meaning— are constantly 
persuading them that they are oppressed and 
that they will be given their liberty, as they 
choose to call it, as soon as the Republican 
party is overthrown in this country. These 
are the true enemies of the Filipinos, and not 
the men who are striving with whole-hearted 
energy and with consummate success to amel- 
iorate their condition and to make them fit for 
self-government and all its attendant advan- 
287 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

tages. The so-called anti-imperialists con- 
found in their daily speeches and writings two 
absolutely unrelated ideas— the liberty, the 
civil rights, the self-government which we have 
given the Filipinos, and the independence 
which the best of them do not want and know 
they are unable to maintain. To abandon them 
now, to cast them adrift at the mercy of ac- 
cident, would be an act of cowardice and 
treachery which would gain us the scorn and 
reproach of civilization. 

Our opponents sometimes say we have no 
right to claim the credit of the great deeds of 
the last half-century — that we could not have 
accomplished them without the aid of Demo- 
crats. Nothing truer was ever said; and it is 
one of the chief glories of our annals, and it 
forms the surest foundation of our hopes for 
the future. The principles upon which our 
party is built are so sound, they have so irre- 
sistible an attraction to patriotic and fair- 
minded men, that whenever a time of crisis 
comes, when the national welfare is clearly at 
stake, when voters must decide whether they 
shall follow their prejudices or their con- 
sciences, we draw from other parties their best 
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FIFTY YEAKS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

men by thousands. Bright among the bright- 
est of those who founded our party shine the 
names of Democrats ; and when the war came 
on, the picked men of that party rallied to the 
colors. Douglas, shortly before he died, de- 
clared his unfaltering support of Lincoln. The 
sun would go down before I could name the 
Democrats who fought like heroes for the 
country. Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, Dix, 
Sickles, Logan— in short, an innumerable host. 
Democrats all, rushed into the field and there- 
after fought and worked with the Republicans 
while life lasted. And that vast majority of 
Lincoln's in 1864 would have been impossible 
had not myriads of Democrats, casting their 
life-long associations to the winds, listened to 
the inward monitor which said, ''Choose you 
this day whom ye will serve. ' ' 

As it was then, so it has been in after years. 
When the attempt was made to repudiate, in 
whole or in part, the national debt; or to 
abolish the system of protection to American 
industries, founded by Washington and Hamil- 
ton, and approved by the experience of a hun- 
dred years ; or to degrade our currency at the 
demand of mere ignorance and greed— in all 

«• 289 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

these cases we saw the proof of the homely- 
adage that you may lead a horse to the 
water but camiot make him drink. In spite of 
organizations and platforms, in spite of the 
frantic adjurations of gifted orators, hosts of 
patriotic Democrats walked quietly to the polls 
and voted as their consciences dictated, in the 
interests of the public welfare rather than of a 
party. Even in so lofty and restricted an 
arena as our Senate, we have seen the ablest 
and most adroit organizer of his party fail in 
the most energetic effort of his life to induce 
his party to reject a great national benefit be- 
cause it was offered by Republican hands. 
Half the Democratic Senators said this was 
no question for pettifogging politics and voted 
for an American canal across the Isthmus. 

We are not claiming that we monopolize the 
virtue or the patriotism of the country. There 
are good men in all parties. I know far better 
men than I am who are Democrats. But we are 
surely allowed, in a love feast like this, to talk 
of what has been done by the family, and at 
least to brag a little of the Democrats who 
have helped us. We get their votes for one 
reason only— because we started right and in 
290 



FIFTY YEAES OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

the main have kept right. We invite accessions 
from the ranks of our patriotic opponents, and 
we shall get them in the future, as we have in 
the past, whenever we deserve them. We shall 
get them this year, because this year we do 
deserve them. We come before the country in 
a position which cannot be successfully at- 
tacked in front, or flank, or rear. What we 
have done, what we are doing, and what we 
intend to do— on all three we confidently 
challenge the verdict of the American people. 
The record of fifty years will show whether as 
a party we are fit to govern; the state of our 
domestic and foreign affairs will show whether 
as a party we have fallen off ; and both together 
will show whether we can be trusted for a while 
longer. 

Our platform is before the country. Perhaps 
it is lacking in novelty. There is certainly 
nothing sensational about it. It is substantially 
the platform on which we won two great vic- 
tories in the name of McKinley, and it is still 
sound and serviceable. Its principles have 
been tested by eight years of splendid success 
and have received the approval of the country. 
It is in line with all our platforms of the past, 
291 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

except where prophecy and promise in those 
days have become history in these. We stand 
by the ancient ways which have proved good. 
It would take a wizard to guess what a dainty 
dish our adversaries will set before the sover- 
eign people to-morrow. Their State conven- 
tions have given them a rich variety to choose 
from. As to money, they range all the way 
from Bedlam to Belmont ; as to tariff, the one 
wing in Maryland is almost sane, the other 
wants raving free trade and dynamite for the 
custom-houses. When they discuss our island 
possessions, some want to scuttle away and 
abandon them out of hand; others agree with 
that sensible Southerner who said: ''What 's 
the use talking about expansion. Great Scott ! 
we 've done expanded ! ' ' One thing is reason- 
ably sure : they will get as near to our platform 
as they possibly can and they will by implica- 
tion approve everything McKinley and Roose- 
velt have done in the last four years. They 
will favor sound finajice and a tariff which will 
not disturb business ; rigid honesty in adminis- 
tration and prompt punishment of the dis- 
honest; the Monroe Doctrine and an Isthmian 
canal. To be logical they ought to go on and 

292 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

nominate the Republican candidates who are 
pledged to all these laudable policies. 

But they will not be logical. They do not 
care to oppose our policy; they merely deny 
our sincerity in avowing it. They cannot deny 
the soundness of our principles; they pretend 
themselves to hold them. But the function of 
an opposition is to oppose, and as they are 
otherwise destitute of an issue they seek to 
make a few by attributing to us principles we 
have never dreamed of holding and policies 
which are abhorrent to us. And distrusting 
the effect of these maneuvers in advance, they 
announce their plan of campaign to be not pro- 
anything, but anti-Roosevelt. This is a mere 
counsel of desperation, and the Republicans 
will gladly accept the issue. 

Even on this narrow issue they will dodge 
most of the details. Ask them. Has the Presi- 
dent been a good citizen, a good soldier, a good 
man in all personal relations ? Is he a man of 
intelligence, of education? Does he know this 
country well? Does he know the world out- 
side? Has he studied law, history, and poli- 
tics? Has he had great chances to learn, and 
has he improved them ? Is he sound and strong 

293 



FIFTY YEAES OF EEPUBLICAN PARTY 

in mind, body, and soul? Is he accessible and 
friendly to all sorts and conditions of men? 
Has he the courage and the candor, and the 
God-given ability to speak to the people and 
tell them what he thinks 1 To all these questions 
they will answer. Yes. Then what is your ob- 
jection to him? They will either stand speech- 
less or they will answer with the parrot 
cry which we have heard so often: He is 
unsafe ! 

In a certain sense we shall have to admit 
this to be true. To every grade of lawbreaker, 
high or low ; to a man who would rob a till or a 
ballot box; to the sneak or the bully; to the 
hypocrite and the humbug, Theodore Roose- 
velt is more than unsafe; he is positively 
dangerous. 

But let us be serious with these good people. 
What are the coefficients of safety in a Chief of 
State? He should have courage; the wisest 
coward that ever lived is not fit to rule. And 
intelligence; we want no blunder-headed hero 
in the White House. And honesty; a clever 
thief would do infinite mischief. These three 
are the indispensables. With them a man is 
all the more safe if he has a sense of propor- 
tion, a sense of humor, a wide knowledge of 
294 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

men and affairs ; if he seeks good counsel ; and, 
finally, if he is a patriot, if he loves his country, 
believes in it, and seeks in all things its interest 
and its glory. Any man may make mistakes ; 
but such a man as this will make few, and no 
grave ones. 

Such a man is our President and our candi- 
date. He is prompt and energetic, but he takes 
infinite pains to get at the facts before he acts. 
In all the crises in which he has been accused 
of undue haste, his action has been the result 
of long meditation and well-reasoned con- 
viction. If he think rapidly, that is no fault; 
he thinks thoroughly, and that is the essential. 
When he made peace between the miners and 
the operators, it was no sudden caprice but the 
fruit of serious reflection, and this act of 
mingled philanthropy and common sense was 
justified by a great practical result. When he 
proclaimed anew the Monroe Doctrine in the 
Venezuela case his action was followed by the 
most explicit acceptance of that saving policy 
which has ever come to us from overseas. He 
acted very swiftly, it is true, in Mississippi, 
when the best citizens of a town threatened the 
life of a postmistress for no fault but her color. 
He simply said, ''Very well, gentlemen; you 
295 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

may get your letters somewhere else for a 
while. ' ' 

And as to the merger suits, now that people 
have come to their senses they see that his 
action in that case was as regular as the 
equinox. He was informed through legal 
channels that a statute had been violated. He 
did not make the statute, but he was bound by 
his oath to execute it. He brought the proceed- 
ing which it was his duty to bring. The courts, 
from the lowest to the highest, sustained his 
action. He did what it would have been a high 
misdemeanor not to have done. The laws in 
this country are made to be obeyed, whether it 
is safe or not. It is always unsafe to disobey 
them. 

But there has been more noise made over his 
suddenness on the Isthmus of Panama than 
elsewhere. It is difficult to treat this charge 
with seriousness. The President had made a 
treaty with Colombia at her own solicitation, 
which was infinitely to her advantage, to in- 
augurate an enterprise which was to be for 
the benefit of the world. He waited with 
endless patience while Bogota delayed and 
trifled with the matter, and finally rejected it, 

296 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

and suggested new negotiations for a larger 
sum. Panama, outraged by this climax of the 
wrongs she had already suffered, declared and 
established her independence. The President, 
following an unbroken line of precedents, 
entered into relations with the new Republic, 
and, obeying his duty to protect the transit of 
the Isthmus as all other Presidents had done 
before him, gave orders that there should be 
no bloodshed on the line of the railway. He 
said, like Grant, ^ ' Let us have peace, ' ' and we 
had it. It will seem incredible to posterity that 
any American could have objected to this. He 
acted wisely and beneficently, and all some 
people can find to criticise in his action is that 
he was too brisk about it. If a thing is right 
and proper to do, it does not make it criminal 
to do it promptly. No, gentlemen ! That was 
a time when the hour and the man arrived to- 
gether. He struck while the iron was white 
hot on the anvil of opportunity, and forged as 
perfect a bit of honest statecraft as this genera- 
tion has seen. 

We could desire no better fortune, in the 
campaign upon which we are entering, than 
that the other side should persist in their an- 

297 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

nounced intention to make the issue upon Presi- 
dent Roosevelt. What a godsend to our ora- 
tors! It takes some study, some research, to 
talk about the tariff, or the currency, or foreign 
policy. But to talk about Roosevelt! it is as 
easy as to sing ''the glory of the Graeme." Of 
gentle birth and breeding, yet a man of the 
people in the best sense; with the training of 
a scholar and the breezy accessibility of a 
ranchman ; a man of the library and a man of 
the world; an athlete and a thinker; a soldier 
and a statesman; a reader, a writer, and a 
maker of history ; with the sensibility of a poet 
and the steel nerve of a rough rider ; one who 
never did, and never could, turn his back on a 
friend or an enemy. A man whose merits are 
so great that he could win on his merits alone ; 
whose personality is so engaging that you lose 
sight of his merits. Make their fight on a man 
like that ! What irreverent caricaturist was it 
that called them the Stupid party? 

In our candidate for the Vice-Presidency we 
have followed the old and commendable custom 
of the Republic, and have nominated a man in 
every way fit for the highest place in the nation, 
who will bring to the Presidency of the Senate 

298 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

an ability and experience rarely equaled in its 
history. 

I have detained you too long ; yet as I close I 
want to say a word to the young men whose 
political life is beginning. Anyone entering 
business would be glad of the chance to become 
one of an established firm with years of success 
behind it, with a wide connection, with unblem- 
ished character, with credit founded on a rock. 
How infinitely brighter the future when the 
present is so sure, the past so glorious. Every- 
thing great done by this country in the last 
fifty years has been done under the auspices of 
the Republican party. Is not this conscious- 
ness a great asset to have in your mind and 
memory"? As a mere item of personal comfort 
is it not worth having? Lincoln and Grant, 
Hayes and Garfield, Harrison and McKinley 
— names secure in the heaven of fame, — they 
all are gone, leaving small estates in worldly 
goods, but what vast possessions in principles, 
memories, sacred associations ! It is a start 
in life to share that wealth. Who now boasts 
that he opposed Lincoln? who brags of his 
voting against Grant? though both acts may 
have been from the best of motives. In our 
299 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

form of government there must be two parties, 
and tradition, circmnstances, temperament, 
will always create a sufficient opposition. But 
what young man would not rather belong to 
the party that does things, instead of one that 
opposes them; to the party that looks up, 
rather than down; to the party of the dawn, 
rather than of -the sunset. For fifty years the 
Republican party has believed in the country 
and labored for it in hope and joy; it has 
reverenced the flag and followed it ; has carried 
it under strange skies and planted it on far- 
receding horizons. It has seen the nation grow 
greater every year and more respected ; by just 
dealing, by intelligent labor, by a genius for 
enterprise, it has seen the country extend its 
intercourse and its influence to regions un- 
known to our* fathers. Yet it has never abated 
one jot or tittle of the ancient law imposed on 
us by our God-fearing ancestors. We have 
fought a good fight, but also we have kept the 
faith. The Constitution of our fathers has 
been the light to our feet ; our path is, and will 
ever remain, that of ordered progress, of lib- 
erty under the law. The country has vastly in- 
creased, but the great-brained statesmen who 
300 



FIFTY YEARS OF REPUBLICAN PARTY 

preceded us provided for infinite growth. The 
discoveries of science have made miraculous 
additions to our knowledge. But we are not 
daunted by progress ; we are not afraid of the 
light. The fabric our fathers builded on such 
sure foundations will stand all shocks of fate 
or fortune. There will always be a proud 
pleasure in looking back on the history they 
made ; but, guided by their example, the coming 
generation has the right to anticipate work not 
less important, days equally memorable to 
mankind. We who are passing off the stage 
bid you, as the children of Israel encamping 
by the sea were bidden, to Go Forward; we 
whose hands can no longer hold the flaming 
torch pass it on to you that its clear light may 
show the truth to the ages that are to come. 



301 



AMERICA'S LOYE OF PEACE 



ADDRESS AT THIRTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF PEACE 
BOSTON, OCTOBER 3d, 1904 



AMERICA'S LOYE OF PEACE 



I ESTEEM it a great honor and privilege to 
be allowed to extend to you the welcome of 
the Government and the people of the United 
States of America on this memorable and 
auspicious occasion. No time could be more 
fitting for this gathering of a parliament of 
peace than to-day, when at the other end of the 
world the thunder of a destructive and san- 
guinary war is deafening the nations, while 
here we are preparing to settle the question of 
a vast transfer of power by an appeal to reasoni 
and orderly procedure, under the sanction of 
a law implicitly accepted by eighty millions of 
people. 

And as if heaven had decided to give 
a sign of deepest significance to the hour of 
your meeting, it coincides with the commitment 
to eternal peace of all that was mortal of our 
dear and honored co-laborer in this sacred 
cause. George Frisbie Hoar had many titles to 
glory and honor. Not the least of them was 

2» 305 



AMEEICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

the firm and constant courage with which, 
through all his illustrious life, he pleaded for 
humanity and universal good will. 

No place could be more suitable than this 
high-hearted city, which has been for nearly 
three hundred years the birthplace and the 
home of every idea of progress and enlighten- 
ment which has germinated in the Western 
World. To bid you welcome to the home of 
Vane, of Winthrop, and of Adams, of Channing 
and Emerson, is to give you the freedom of no 
mean city, to make you partakers of a spiritual 
inheritance without which, with all our opu- 
lence, we should be poor indeed. It is true that 
this great Commonwealth has sought, with the 
sword, peace under liberty. We confess that 
many wars have left their traces in the pages 
of its history and its literature ; art has adorned 
the public places of this stately town with the 
statues of its heroic sons. But the dominant 
note of its highest culture, its most persistent 
spirit, has been that righteousness which ex- 
alteth a nation, that obedience to the inner 
light which leads along the paths of peace. 

And the policy of the nation at large, which 
owes so much of its civic spirit to the founders 
306 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

of New England, has been in the main a policy 
of peace. During the hundred and twenty 
years of our independent existence we have 
had but three wars with the outside world, 
though we have had a most grievous and dolor- 
ous struggle with our own people. We have 
had, I think, a greater relative immunity from 
war than any of our neighbors. All our great- 
est men have been earnest advocates of peace. 
The very men who founded our liberties with 
the mailed hand detested and abhorred war as 
the most futile and ferocious of human follies. 
Franklin and Jefferson repeatedly denounced 
it— the one with all the energy of his rhetoric, 
the other with the lambent fire of his wit. But 
not our philosophers alone— our fighting men 
have seen at close quarters how hideous is the 
face of war. Washington said, ' ' My first wish 
is to see this plague to mankind banished from 
the earth"; and again he said, "We have ex- 
perienced enough of its evils in this country to 
know that it should not be wantonly or un- 
necessarily entered upon." There is no dis- 
cordant note in the utterances of our most 
eminent soldiers on this subject. The most 
famous utterance of General Grant— the one 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

which will linger longest in the memories of 
men — was the prayer of his war-weary heart, 
"Let "US have peace." Sherman reached the 
acme of his marvelous gift of epigram when 
he said, "War is hell." And Abraham Lin- 
coln, after the four terrible years in which he 
had directed our vast armies and navies, 
uttered on the threshold of eternity the fervent 
and touching aspiration that "the mighty 
scourge of war might speedily pass away. ' ' 

There has been no solution of continuity in 
the sentiments of our Presidents on this sub- 
ject up to this day. McKinley deplored with 
every pulse of his honest and kindly heart the 
advent of the war which he had hoped might 
not come in his day, and gladly hailed the 
earliest moment for making peace ; and Presi- 
dent Roosevelt has the same tireless energy in 
the work of concord that he displayed when he 
sought peace and ensured it on the field of 
battle. No Presidents in our history have been 
so faithful and so efficient as the last two in 
the cause of arbitration and of every peaceful 
settlement of differences. I mention them to- 
gether because their work has been harmonious 
and consistent. We hailed with joy the gen- 
308 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

erous initiative of the Russian Emperor, and 
sent to the conference at The Hague the best 
men we had in our civic and military life. 
When The Hague Court lay apparently 
wrecked at the beginning of its voyage, threat- 
ened with death before it had fairly begun to 
live, it was the American Government which 
gave it the breath of life by inviting the Repub- 
lic of Mexico to share our appeal to its juris- 
diction; and the second case brought before it 
was at the instance of Mr. Roosevelt, who 
declined in its favor the high honor of arbitrat- 
ing an affair of world-wide importance. 

I beg you to believe, it is not by way of boast- 
ing that I recall these incidents to your minds ; 
it is rather as a profession of faith in a cause 
which the present Administration has deeply 
at heart that I ask you to remember, in the 
deliberations upon which you are entering, the 
course to which the American Government is 
pledged and which it has steadily pursued for 
the last seven years. It is true that in those 
years we have had a hundred days of war— 
but they put an end forever to bloodshed which 
had lasted a generation. We landed a few 
platoons of marines on the Isthmus last year ; 
309 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

but that act closed without a shot a sanguinary 
succession of trivial wars. We marched a 
little army to Peking; but it was to save not 
only the beleaguered legations, but a great im- 
periled civilization. By mingled gentleness 
and energy, to which most of the world beyond 
our borders has done justice, we have given to 
the Philippines, if not peace, at least a nearer 
approach to it than they have had within the 
memory of men. 

If our example is worth anything to the 
world, we have given it in the vital matter of 
disarmament. We have brought away from 
the Far East 55,000 soldiers whose work was 
done, and have sent them back to the fields of 
peaceful activity. We have reduced our Army 
to its minimum of 60,000 men ; in fact, we may 
say we have no army, but in place of one a 
nucleus for drill and discipline. We have three- 
fourths of one soldier for every thousand of 
the population— a proportion which if adopted 
by other powers would at once eliminate wars 
and rumors of wars from the daily thoughts 
of the chancelleries of the world. 

But fixed as our tradition is, clear as is our 
purpose in the direction of peace, no country 

310 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

is permanently immune to war so long as the 
desire and the practice of peace are not uni- 
versal. If we quote Washington as an advocate 
of peace, it is but fair also to quote him where 
he says: "To be prepared for war is one of 
the most effectual means of preserving peace. ' ' 
And at another time he said: "To an active 
external commerce the protection of a naval 
force is indispensable. To secure respect to a 
neutral flag requires a naval force organized 
and ready to vindicate it from insult or aggres- 
sion." To acknowledge the existence of an 
e\dl is not to support or approve it; but the 
facts must be faced. Human history is one long 
desolate story of bloodshed. All the arts unite 
in the apparent conspiracy to give precedence 
to the glory of arms. Demosthenes and 
Pericles adjured the Athenians by the memory 
of their battles. Horace boasted that he had 
been a soldier, non sine gloria. Even Milton, 
in that sublime sonnet where he said, "Peace 
hath her victories no less renowned than 
war," mentioned among the godly trophies 
of Cromwell "Darwen stream with blood of 
Scots imbrued. ' ' In almost every sermon and 
hymn we hear in our churches the imagery of 
311 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

war acd battle is used. "We are charged to 
fight the good fight of faith; we are to sail 
through bloody seas to win the prize. The 
Christian soldier is constantly marshaled to 
war. Not only in our habits and customs, but 
in our daily speech and in our inmost thoughts 
we are beset by the obsession of conflict and 
mutual destruction. It is like the law of sin 
in the members to which the greatest of the 
Apostles refers: ''Who shall deliver us from 
the body of this death?" 

I am speaking to those who recognize the 
lamentable state of things and who yet do not 
accept it, or submit to it, and who hope that 
through the shadow of this night we shall sweep 
into a younger day. How is this great deliver- 
ance to be accomplished? 

We have all recently read that wonderful 
sermon on war by Count Tolstoi, in which a 
spirit of marvelous lucidity and fire, absolutely 
detached from geographical or political con- 
ditions, speaks the Word as it has been given 
him to speak it, and as no other living man 
could have done. As you read, with an aching 
heart, his terrible arraignment of war, feeling 
that as a man you are partly responsible for all 
312 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

human atrocities, you wait with impatience for 
the remedy he shall propose, and you find it is 
—Religion. Yes, that is the remedy. If all 
would do right, nobody would do wrong- 
nothing is plainer. It is a counsel of per- 
fection, satisfactory to prophets and saints, to 
be reached in God's good time. But you are 
here to consult together to see whether the 
generation now alive may not do something to 
hasten the coming of the acceptable day, the 
appearance on earth of the beatific vision. If 
we can not at once make peace and good will 
the universal rule and practice of nations, what 
can we do to approximate this condition? What 
measures can we now take which may lead us 
at least a little distance toward the wished- 
for goal? 

I have not come to advise you; I have no 
such ambitious pretensions. I do not even 
aspire to take part in your deliberations. But 
I am authorized to assure you that the Amer- 
ican Government extends to you a cordial and 
sjTupathetic welcome, and shares to the utmost 
the spirit and purpose in which you have met. 
The President, so long as he remains in power, 
has no thought of departing from the traditions 

313 



AMERICA 'S LOVE OF PEACE 

bequeathed us by the great soldiers and states- 
men of our early history, which have been 
strictly followed during the last seven years. 
We shall continue to advocate and to carry into 
effect, as far as practicable, the principle of 
the arbitration of such questions as may not be 
settled through diplomatic negotiations. We 
have already done much in this direction; we 
shall hope to do much more. The President 
is now considering the negotiation of treaties 
of arbitration with such of the European 
powers as desire them, and hopes to lay them 
before the Senate next winter. And, finally, 
the President has only a few days ago prom- 
ised, in response to the request of the Inter- 
parliamentary Union, to invite the nations to a 
second conference at The Hague to continue 
the beneficent work of the Conference of 1899. 
Unhappily we can not foresee in the im- 
mediate future the cessation of wars upon the 
earth. We ought therefore to labor constantly 
for the mitigation of the horrors of war, 
especially to do what we can to lessen the suf- 
ferings of those who have no part in the 
struggle. This has been one of the most 
warmly clierished wishes of tlie last two Ad- 

314 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

ministrations. I make no apology for reading 
you a paragraph from the message which 
President Roosevelt sent to Congress last 
December. 

There seems good ground for the belief that there 
has been a real growth among the civilized nations 
of a sentiment which will permit a gradual substi- 
tution of other methods than the method of war 
in the settlement of disputes. It is not pretended 
that as yet we are near a position in which it will 
be possible wholly to prevent war, or that a just 
regard for national interest and honor will in all 
cases permit of the settlement of international 
disputes by arbitration; but by a mixture of pru- 
dence and firmness with wisdom we think it is 
possible to do away with much of the provoca- 
tion and excuse for war, and at least in many cases 
to substitute some other and more rational method 
for the settlement of disputes. The Hague Court 
offers so good an example of what can be done in 
the direction of such settlement that it should be 
encouraged in every way. 

Further steps should be taken. In President 
McKinlej^'s annual message of December 5, 1898, 
he made the following recommendation : 

"The experiences of the last year bring forcibly 
home to us a sense of the burdens and the waste 
of war. We desire, in common with most civilized 
nations, to reduce to the lowest possible point the 
damage sustained in time of war by peaceable trade 
and commerce. It is true we may suffer in such 

315 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

cases less than other communities, but all nations 
are damaged more or less by the state of uneasiness 
and apprehension into which an outbreak of hostil- 
ities throws the entire commercial world. It should 
be our object, therefore, to minimize, so far as 
practicable, this inevitable loss and disturbance. 
This purpose can probably best be accomplished 
by an international agreement to regard all private 
property at sea as exempt from capture or des- 
truction by the forces of belligerent powers. The 
United States Government has for many years 
advocated this humane and beneficent principle, and 
is now in a position to recommend it to other 
powers without the imputation of selfish motives. 
I therefore suggest for your consideration that the 
Executive be authorized to correspond with the 
governments of the principal maritime powers with 
a view of incorporating into the permanent law 
of civilized nations the principle of the exemption 
of all private property at sea, not contraband of 
war, from capture or destruction by belligerent 
powers. ' ' 

The President urged this beneficent scheme 
with an earnestness which gained the willing 
attention of Congress, already predisposed to 
it in spirit, and on the 28th of April of this year 
he was able to approve a joint resolution of 
both Houses recommending that the "Presi- 
dent endeavor to bring about an understanding 
among the principal maritime powers with a 
316 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

view of incorporating into the permanent law 
of civilized nations the principle of the exemp- 
tion of all private property at sea, not con- 
traband of war, from capture or destruction 
by belligerents." 

It has not been thought advisable by the 
President during the past summer to call the 
attention of the powers to a project which 
would necessarily be regarded by two of them, 
and possibly by others, with reference to its 
bearing upon the deplorable conflict now 
raging in the Far East. But as we earnestly 
pray that the return of peace may not be long 
delayed between the two nations, to both of 
which we are bound by so many historic ties, 
we may confidently look forward at no distant 
day to inviting the attention of the nations to 
this matter, and we hope we may have the 
powerful influence of this great organization 
in gaining their adherence. 

The time allotted to me is at an end. I can 
only bid you Godspeed in your work. The 
task you have set yourselves, the purpose to 
which you are devoted, have won the praise of 
earth and the blessing of Heaven since the 
morning of time. The noblest of all the beati- 
317 



AMERICA'S LOVE OF PEACE 

tudes is the consecration promised the peace- 
makers. Even if in our time we may not win 
the wreath of olive; even if we may not hear 
the golden clamor of the trumpets celebrating 
the reign of universal and enduring peace, it 
is something to have desired it, to have worked 
for it in the measure of our forces. And if you 
now reap no visible guerdon of your labors the 
peace of God that passes understanding will 
be your all-sufficient reward. 



318 



LIFE m THE WHITE HOUSE 
m THE TIME OF LINCOLN 

FROM "THE CENTUKY MAGAZINE" FOR NOVEMBEfl, 1800 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE IN 
THE TIME OF LINCOLN 



THE daily life of the White House during 
-the momentous years of Lincoln's presi- 
dency had a character of its own, different 
from that of any previous or subsequent time. 
In the first days after the inauguration there 
was the unprecedented rush of office-seekers, 
inspired by a strange mixture of enthusiasm 
and greed, pushed by motives which were per- 
haps at bottom selfish, but which had never- 
theless a curious touch of that deep emotion 
which had stirred the heart of the nation in the 
late election. They were not all ignoble ; among 
that dense crowd that swarmed in the stair- 
cases and the corridors there were many well- 
to-do men who were seeking office to their own 
evident damage, simply because they wished 
to be a part, however humble, of a government 
which they had aided to put in power and to 
which they were sincerely devoted. Many of 
" 321 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

tlie visitors who presented so piteous a figure 
in those early days of 1861 afterwards 
marched, with the independent dignity of a 
private soldier, in the ranks of the Union 
Army, or rode at the head of their regiments 
like men born to command. There were few 
who had not a story worth listening to, if there 
were time and opportunity. But the numbers 
were so great, the competition was so keen, that 
they ceased for the moment to be regarded as 
individuals, drowned as they were in the gen- 
eral sea of solicitation. 

Few of them received office; when, after 
weeks of waiting, one of them got access to the 
President, he was received with kindness by a 
tall, melancholy-looking man sitting at a desk 
with his back to a window which opened upon 
a fair view of the Potomac, who heard his story 
with a gentle patience, took his papers and re- 
ferred them to one of the Departments, and 
that was all; the fatal pigeon-holes devoured 
them. As time wore on and the offices were 
filled the throng of eager aspirants diminished 
and faded away. When the war burst out an 
immediate transformation took place. The 
house was again invaded and overrun by a 

322 



i 

1 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

different class of visitors— youths who wanted 
commissions in the regulars ; men who wished 
to raise irregular regiments or battalions with- 
out regard to their State authorities ; men who 
wanted to furnish stores to the army ; inventors 
full of great ideas and in despair at the apathy 
of the world ; later, an endless stream of officers 
in search of promotion or desirable assign- 
ments. And from first to last there were the 
politicians and statesmen in Congress and out, 
each of whom felt that he had the right by 
virtue of his representative capacity to as 
much of the President's time as he chose, and 
who never considered that he and his kind were 
many and that the President was but one. 

It would be hard to imagine a state of things 
less conducive to serious and effective work, 
yet in one way or another the work was done. 
In the midst of a crowd of visitors whp began 
to arrive early in the morning and who were 
put out, grumbling, by the servants who closed 
the doors at midnight, the President pursued 
those labors which will carry his name to dis- 
tant ages. There was little order or system 
about it; those around him strove from begin- 
ning to end to erect barriers to defend him 

323 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

against constant interruption, but the Presi- 
dent himself was always the first to break them 
down. He disliked anything that kept people 
from him who wanted to see him, and although 
the continual contact with importunity which 
he could not'satisfy, and with distress which he 
could not always relieve, wore terribly upon 
him and made him an old man before his time, 
he would never take the necessary measures to 
defend himself. He continued to the end re- 
ceiving these swarms of visitors, every one of 
whom, even the most welcome, took sornething 
from him in the way of wasted nervous force. 
Henry Wilson once remonstrated with him 
about it: ''You will wear yourself out." He 
replied, with one of those smiles in which there 
was so much of sadness, ''They don't want 
much ; they get but little, and I must see them. ' ' 
In most cases he could do them no good, and it 
afflicted him to see he could not make them un- 
derstand the impossibility of granting their 
requests. One hot afternoon a private soldier 
who had somehow got access to him persisted, 
after repeated explanation that his case was 
one to be settled by his immediate superiors, in 
begging that the President would give it his 
324 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

personal attention. Lincoln at last burst out: 
* ' Now, my man, go away ! I cannot attend to 
all these details. I could as easily bail out the 
Potomac with a spoon. ' ' 

Of course it was not all pure waste ; Mr. Lin- 
coln gained much of information, something 
of cheer and encouragement, from these visits. 
He particularly enjoyed conversing with offi- 
cers of the army and navy, newly arrived from 
the field or from sea. He listened with the 
eagerness of a child over a fairy tale to Gar- 
field's graphic account of the battle of Chicka- 
mauga ; he was always delighted with the wise 
and witty sailor talk of John A. Dahlgren, 
Gustavus V. Fox, and Commander Henry A. 
Wise. Sometimes a word fitly spoken had its 
results. When R. B. Ay res called on him in 
company with Senator Harris, and was intro- 
duced as a captain of artillery who had taken 
part in a recent unsuccessful engagement, he 
asked, ''How many guns did you take in?" 
' ' Six, ' ' Ayres answered. ' ' How many did you 
bring out?" the President asked, maliciously. 
''Eight." This unexpected reply did much to 
gain Ayres his merited promotion. 

The President rose early, as his sleep was 
325 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

light and capricious. In the summer, when he 
lived at the Soldiers ' Home, he would take his 
frugal breakfast and ride into town in time to 
be at his desk at eight o'clock. He began to 
receive visits nominally at ten o 'clock, but long 
before that hour struck the doors were besieged 
by anxious crowds, through whom the people 
of importance, senators and members of Con- 
gress, elbowed their way after the fashion 
which still survives. On days when the Cabinet 
met, Tuesdays and Fridays, the hour of noon 
closed the interviews of the morning. On other 
days it was the President's custom, at about 
that hour, to order the doors to b§ opened and 
all who were waiting to be admitted. The 
crowd would rush in, thronging the narrow 
room, and one by one would make their wants 
Imown. Some came merely to shake hands, 
to wish him Godspeed ; their errand was soon 
done. Others came asking help or mercy ; they 
usually pressed forward, careless, in their 
pain, as to what ears should overhear their 
prayer. But there were many who lingered in 
the rear and leaned against the wall, hoping 
each to be the last, that they might in tete-a- 
tete unfold their schemes for their own ad- 
326 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

vantage or their neighbors ' hurt. These were 
often disconcerted by the President's loud and 
hearty, ' ' Well, friend, what can I do for you ? ' ' 
which compelled them to speak, or retire and 
wait for a more convenient season. 

The inventors were more a source of amuse- 
ment than annoyance. They were Usually men 
of some originality of character, not infre- 
quently carried to eccentricity. Lincoln had 
a quick comprehension of mechanical prin- 
ciples, and often detected a flaw in an invention 
which the contriver had overlooked. He would 
sometimes go out into the waste fields that then 
lay south of the Executive Mansion to test an 
experimental gun or torpedo. He used to quote 
with much merriment the solemn dictum of one 
rural inventor that ' ' a gun ought not to rekyle ; 
if it rekyled at all, it ought to rekyle a little 
f orrid. ' ' He was particularly interested in the 
first rude attempts at the afterwards famous 
mitrailleuses; on one occasion he worked one 
with his own hands at the Arsenal, and sent 
forth peals of Homeric laughter as the balls, 
which had not power to penetrate the target 
set up at a little distance, came bounding back 
among the shins of the bystanders. He accom- 
327 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

panied Colonel. Hiram Berdan one day to the 
camp of his sharpshooters and there practised 
in the trenches his long-disused skill with the 
rifle. A few fortunate shots from his own gun 
and his pleasure at the still better marksman- 
ship of Berdan led to the arming of that ad- 
mirable regiment with breech-loaders. 

At luncheon time he had literally to run the 
gantlet through the crowds who filled the cor- 
ridors between his office and the rooms at the 
west end of the house occupied by the family. 
The afternoon wore away in much the same 
manner as the morning; late in the day he 
usually drove out for an hour's airing; at six 
o 'clock he dined. He was one of the most ab- 
stemious of men ; the pleasures of the table had 
few attractions for him. His breakfast was. 
an egg and a cup of coffee; at luncheon he 
rarely took more than a biscuit and a glass of 
milk, a plate of fruit in its season ; at dinner he 
ate sparingly of one or two courses. He drank 
little or no wine ; not that he remained always 
on principle a total abstainer, as he was during 
a part of his early life in the fervor of the 
''Washingtonian" reform; but he never cared 
for wine or liquors of any sort, and never used 

tobacco. 

328 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

There was little gaiety in the Executive 
house during his time. It was an epoch, if not 
of gloom, at least of a seriousness too intense 
to leave room for much mirth. There were 
the usual formal entertainments, the tradi- 
tional state dinners and receptions, conducted 
very much as they have been ever since. The 
great public receptions, with their vast rushing 
multitudes pouring past him to shake hands, he 
rather enjoyed; they were not a disagreeable 
task to him, and he seemed surprised when 
people commiserated him upon them. He 
would shake hands with thousands of people, 
seemingly unconscious of what he was doing, 
murmuring some monotonous salutation as 
they went by, his eye dim, his thoughts far 
withdrawn; then suddenly he would see some 
familiar face,— his memory for faces was very 
good,— and his eye would brighten and his 
whole form grow attentive; he would greet 
the visitor with a hearty grasp and a ringing 
word and dismiss him with a cheery laugh that 
filled the Blue Room with infectious good nat- 
ure. Many people armed themselves with an 
appropriate speech to be delivered on these 
occasions, but unless it was compressed into 
the smallest possible space it never got utter- 
329 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

ance; the crowd would jostle the peroration 
out of shape. If it were brief enough and hit 
the President's fancy, it generally received a 
swift answer. One night an elderly gentleman 
from Buffalo said, ' ' Up our way, we believe in 
God and Abraham Lincoln," to which the 
President replied, shoving him along the line, 
' ' My friend, you are more than half right. ' ' 

During the first year of the administration 
the house was made lively by the games and 
pranks of Mr. Lincoln's two younger children, 
William and Thomas: Robert, the eldest, was 
away at Harvard, only coming home for short 
vacations. The two little boys, aged eight and 
ten, with their Western independence and en- 
terprise, kept the house in an uproar. They 
drove their tutor wild with their good-natured 
disobedience; they organized a minstrel show 
in the attic; they made acquaintance with the 
office-seekers and became the hot champions 
of the distressed. William was, with all his 
boyish frolic, a child of great promise, capable 
of close application and study. He had a fancy 
for drawing up railway time-tables, and would 
conduct an imaginary train from Chicago to 
New York with perfect precision. He wrote 
330 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

childish verses, which sometimes attained the 
unmerited honors of print. But this bright, 
gentle, studious child sickened and died in 
February, 1862. His father was profoundly 
moved by his death, though he gave no outward 
sign of his trouble, but kept about his work the 
same as ever. His bereaved heart seemed 
afterwards to pour out its fullness on his 
youngest child. ''Tad" was a merry, warm- 
blooded, kindly little boy, perfectly lawless, 
and full of odd fancies and inventions, the 
"chartered libertine" of the Executive Man- 
sion. He ran continually in and out of his 
father's cabinet, interrupting his gravest la- 
bors and conversations with his bright, rapid, 
and very imperfect speech— for he had an im- 
pediment which made his articulation almost 
unintelligible until he was nearly grown. He 
would perch upon his father 's knee, and some- 
times even on his shoulder, while the most 
weighty conferences were going on. Some- 
times escaping from the domestic authorities, 
he would take refuge in that sanctuary for the 
whole evening, dropping to sleep at last on the 
floor, when the President would pick him up 
and carry him tenderly to bed. 
331 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

Mr. Lincoln's life was almost devoid of 
recreation. He sometimes went to the theater, 
and was particularly fond of a play of Shak- 
spere's well acted. He was so delighted with 
Hackett in Falstaff that he wrote him a let- 
ter of warm congratulation which pleased the 
veteran actor so much that he gave it to the 
''New York Herald," which printed it with 
abusive comments. Hackett was greatly mor- 
tified and made suitable apologies ; upon which 
the President wrote to him again in the kind- 
liest manner, saying: 

Give yourself no uneasiness on the subject. . . . 
I certainly did not expect to see my note in print; 
yet I have not been much shocked by the comments 
upon it. They are a fair specimen of what has oc- 
curred to me through life, I have endured a great 
deal of ridicule, without much malice; and have 
received a great deal of kindness, not quite free 
from ridicule, I am used to it. 

This incident had the usual sequel: the 
veteran comedian asked for an office, which 
the President was not able to give him, and 
the pleasant acquaintance ceased. A hundred 
times this experience was repeated: a man 
whose disposition and talk were agreeable 
332 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

would be introduced to the President; he took 
pleasure in his conversation for two or three 
interviews, and then this congenial person 
would ask some favor impossible to grant, and 
go away in bitterness of spirit. It is a cross 
that every President must bear. 

Mr. Lincoln spent most of his evenings in his 
office, though occasionally he remained in the 
drawing-room after dinner, conversing with 
visitors or listening to music, for which he had 
an especial liking, though he was not versed in 
the science, and preferred simple ballads to 
more elaborate compositions. In his office he 
was not often suffered to be alone ; he frequently 
passed the evening there with a few friends in 
frank and free conversation. If the company 
was all of one sort he was at his best ; his wit 
and rich humor had free play; he was once 
more the Lincoln of the Eighth Circuit, the 
cheeriest of talkers, the riskiest of story tell- 
ers ; but if a stranger came in he put on in an 
instant his whole armor of dignity and reserve. 
He had a singular discernment of men; he 
would talk of the most important political and 
military concerns with a freedom which often 
amazed his intimates, but we do not recall an 
333 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

instance in which this confidence was mis- 
placed. 

Where only one or two were present he was 
fond of reading aloud. He passed many of 
the summer evenings in this way when occupy- 
ing his cottage at the Soldiers' Home. He 
would there read Shakespere for hours with 
a single secretary for audience. The plays 
he most affected were ' ' Hamlet, " " Macbeth, ' ' 
and the series of Histories; among these he 
never tired of ''Richard 11." The ter- 
rible outburst of grief and despair into 
which Richard falls in the third act had a pe- 
culiar fascination for him. I have heard him 
read it at Springfield, at the White House, and 
at the Soldiers' Home. 

For heaven's sake, let us sit upon the ground, 
And tell sad stories of the death of kings:— 
How some have been deposed, some slain in war, 
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed; 
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed ; 
All murdered:— For within the hollow crown 
That rounds the mortal temples of a king 
Keeps Death his court; and there the antic sits, 
Scoffing his state, and grinning at his pomp,— 
Allowing him a breath, a little scene 
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks ; 
Infusing him with self and vain conceit, — 

334 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

As if this flesh, which walls about our life, 
Were brass impregnable, — and humored thus, 
Comes at the last, and with a little pin 
Bores through his castle walls and— farewell. King! 

He read Sliakespere more than all other 
writers together. He made no attempt to keep 
pace with the ordinary literature of the day. 
Sometimes he read a scientific work with keen 
appreciation, but he pursued no systematic 
course. He owed less to reading than most 
men. He delighted in Burns; he said one 
day after reading those exquisite lines to 
Glencairn, beginning, "The bridegroom may 
forget the bride," that "Burns never touched 
a sentiment without carrying it to its ultimate 
expression and leaving nothing further to be 
said." Of Thomas Hood he was also exces- 
sively fond. He often read aloud "The 
Haunted House." He would go to bed with 
a volume of Hood in his hands, and would 
sometimes rise at midnight and traversing the 
long halls of the Executive Mansion in his 
night clothes would come to his secretary's 
room and read aloud something that especially 
pleased him. He wanted to share his enjoy- 
ment of the writer ; it was dull pleasure to him 

335 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

to laugh alone. He read Bryant and Whit- 
tier with appreciation ; there were many poems 
of Holmes's that he read with intense relish. 
' ' The Last Leaf ' ' was one of his favorites ; he 
knew it by heart, and used often to repeat with 
deep feeling: 

The mossy marbles rest 

On the lips that he has pressed 

In their bloom ; 
And the names he loved to hear 
Have been carved for many a year 

On the tomb ; 

giving the marked Southwestern pronuncia- 
tion of the words "hear" and "year." A 
poem by William Knox, ' ' Oh, why should the 
Spirit of Mortal be proud?" he learned by 
heart in his youth, and used to repeat all his 
life. 

Upon all but two classes the President made 
the impression of unusual power as well as of 
unusual goodness. He failed only in the case 
of those who judged men by a purely conven- 
tional standard of breeding, and upon those so 
poisoned by political hostility that the testi- 
mony of their own eyes and ears became un- 
trustworthy. He excited no emotion but one 

336 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

of contempt in tlie finely tempered mind of 
Hawthorne; several English tourists have 
given the most distorted pictures of his speech 
and his manners. Some Southern writers who 
met him in the first days of 1861 spoke of him 
as a drunken, brawling boor, whose mouth 
dripped with paths and tobacco, when in truth 
whisky and tobacco were as alien to his lips 
as profanity. There is a story current in Eng- 
land, as on the authority of the late Lord 
Lyons, on the coarse jocularity with which he 
once received a formal diplomatic communica- 
tion; but as Lord Lyons told the story there 
was nothing objectionable about it. The 
British Minister called at the White House to 
announce the marriage of the Prince of Wales. 
He made the formal speech appropriate to the 
occasion; the President replied in the usual 
conventional manner. The requisite formali- 
ties having thus been executed, the President 
took the bachelor diplomatist by the .hand, say- 
ing, "And now, Lord Lyons, go thou and do 
likewise. ' ' 

The evidence of all the men admitted to his 
intimacy is that he maintained, without the 

least eifort or assumption, a singular dignity 
22 337 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

and reserve in the midst of his easiest conver- 
sation. Charles A. Dana says, ''Even in his 
freest moments one always felt the presence of 
a will and an intellectual power which main- 
tained the ascendancy of the President." In 
his relations to his Cabinet "it was always 
plain that he was the master and they were the 
subordinates. They constantly had to yield 
to his will, and if he ever yielded to them it was 
because they convinced him that the course 
they advised was judicious and appropriate. ' ' 
Wliile men of the highest culture and position 
thus recognized his intellectual primacy there 
was no man so humble as to feel abashed be- 
fore him. Frederick Douglass beautifully ex- 
pressed the sentiment of the plain people in 
his company: "I feel as though I was in the 
presence of a big brother and that there was 
safety in his atmosphere. ' ' 

As time wore on and the war held its ter- 
rible course, upon no one of all those who lived 
through it were its effects more apparent than 
upon the President. He bore the sorrows of 
the nation in his own heart ; he suffered deeply 
not only from disappointments, from treach- 
ery, from hope deferred, from the open as- 
338 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

saults of enemies, and from the sincere anger 
of discontented friends, but also from the 
world-wide distress and affliction which flowed 
from the great conflict in which he was en- 
gaged and which he could not evade. One 
of the most tender and compassionate of men, 
he was forced to give orders which cost thous- 
ands of lives; by nature a man of order and 
thrift, he saw the daily spectacle of unutterable 
waste and destruction which he could not pre- 
vent. The cry of the widow and the orphan 
was always in his ears; the awful responsibil- 
ity resting upon him as the protector of an 
imperiled republic kept him true to his duty, 
but could not make him unmindful of the inti- 
mate details of that vast sum of human misery 
involved in a civil war. 

Under this frightful ordeal his demeanor 
and disposition changed— so gradually that it 
would be impossible to say when the change 
began; but he was in mind, body, and nerves 
a very different man at the second inaugura- 
tion from the one who had taken the oath in 
1861. He continued always the same kindly, 
genial, and cordial spirit he had-been at first ; 
but the boisterous laughter became less fre- 
339 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

quent year by year; the eye grew veiled by 
constant meditation on momentous subjects; 
the air of reserve and detachment from his 
surroundings increased. He aged with great 
rapidity. 

This change is shown with startling distinct- 
ness by two life-masks— the one made by 
Leonard W. Volk in Chicago, April, 1860, the 
other by Clark Mills in Washington, in the 
spring of 1865. The first is of a man of fifty- 
one, and young for his years. The face has a 
clean, firm outline ; it is free from fat, but the 
muscles are hard and full; the large mobile 
mouth is ready to speak, to shout, or laugh ; the 
bold, curved nose is broad and substantial, with 
spreading nostrils; it is a face full of life, of 
energy, of vivid aspiration. The other is so sad 
and peaceful in its infinite repose that the fam- 
ous sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens insisted, 
when he first saw it, that it was a death-mask. 
The lines are set, as if the living face, like the 
copy, had been in bronze ; the nose is thin, and 
lengthened by the emaciation of the cheeks; 
the mouth is fixed like that of an archaic 
statue; a look as of one on whom sorrow and 
care had done their worst without victory is on 
340 



LIFE IN THE WHITE HOUSE 

all the features ; the whole expression is of un- 
speakable sadness and all-suflBcing strength. 
Yet the peace is not the dreadful peace of 
death ; it is the peace that passeth understand- 
ing. 



341 



CLARENCE KING 



PEOM THE "CLARENCE KING" MEMOIES PUBLISHED FOE THE 
CENTUBY ASSOCIATION 



CLARENCE KING 



WE sometimes, though most rarely, meet 
a man of a nature so genial, of qualities 
so radiant, so instinct with vitality, that in 
connection with him the thought of mortality 
seems incongruous. Such men appear as 
exempt from the ordinary lethal fate of the 
rest of us as the ''happy gods" of the Greek 
poets. They are not necessarily fortunate or 
prosperous, but whatever their luck or their 
accidents they seem as independent of them 
as actors are of their momentary disguises. 
The law of their nature is to be radiant; 
clouds are to them a transient and negligible 
condition. While they live they are sur- 
rounded by an atmosphere of universal regard 
and admiration, and when the end comes, 
though the mourning of their friends is deep 
and sincere, it is tinged with something ex- 
quisite and splendid, like the luxury of purple 
345 



CLAEENCE KING 

and gold that attends the close of a troubled 
and electric day. 

Such a man was Clarence King. While he 
lived, it was our habit to believe that no real 
evil could befall him ; and now that he is dead, 
—although we know we have lost something 
from life which made it especially precious 
and desirable, yet there remains a souvenir 
so delightful, so filled with tenderness and in- 
spiration, that there are few pleasures the 
world contains so valuable as his memoiy in 
the hearts of his friends. 

He possessed to an extraordinary degree 
the power of attracting and attaching to him- 
self friends of every sort and condition. The 
cowboys and packers of the plains and the 
hills; the employes of railroads and hotels; 
men of science and men of commerce; the 
Senate and the clergy— in all these ways of 
life his friends were numerous and devoted, 
bound to him by a singular sympathy and 
mutual comprehension. When in middle life 
—if we may use this expression in reference 
to one who was always young— he went to 
Europe, he continued the same facile conquest 
of hearts. In this he was aided by a remark- 
346 



CLARENCE KING 

able ease in acquiring a colloquial command 
of languages. Having occasion to go to Mex- 
ico, he put in his pocket a small Spanish 
Dictionary and without the aid of a Grammar 
got by heart some thousand nouns and verbs 
in the infinitive, so that on arriving at 
Guaymas he was master of a highly effective 
and picturesque jargon which delighted the 
Mexicans and carried him triumphantly to the 
mines of Culiacan. Afterwards he acquired 
a correct and grammatical knowledge of the 
Castilian. It was the same in France. He 
had read French from childhood, but had 
never spoken it. On arriving in Paris, where 
he was conducting some important business, 
he did not pause to gain familiarity with the 
spoken idiom. He attacked it with the energy 
of a cavalry charge, and though at first he 
made havoc of genders, moods and tenses, he 
took it as we are told the Kingdom of Heaven 
is taken, by violence. In a few weeks he was 
speaking the language with perfect ease, and 
was an equally welcome guest in financial, 
artistic and literary circles. In England 
nothing describes his success but the well-worn 
phrase of Dickens. He was ''the delight of 
347 



CLARENCE KING 

the nobility and gentry" and not of them only, 
but he made friends also in "V\Tiitechapel and 
Soho, and even to some in the submerged 
fraction, the most wretched derelicts of civil- 
ization, he brought the ineffable light of his 
keen comprehension and generous sympathy. 
I introduced him once to a woman of eminent 
distinction, one of the first writers of our 
time. Afer he had gone, she said: ''I under- 
stand now the secret of his charm. It is his 
kindness. ' ' 

It is not for me to speak of his commanding 
place in the world of science: his associates 
and colleagues will keep that phase of his life 
in remembrance. I think his reputation as a 
great physicist suffered somewhat from the 
dazzling attractiveness of his personality. It 
was hard to remember that this polished trif- 
ler, this exquisite wit, who diffused over every 
conversation in which he was engaged an iri- 
descent mist of epigram and persiflage, was 
one of the greatest savants of his time. It was 
hard to take seriously a man who was so 
deliciously agreeable. Yet his work on Sys- 
tematic Geology is a masterpiece of practical 
and ordered learning, and his treatise on The 

348 



CLARENCE KING 

Age of the Earth has been accepted as the 
profoundest and most authoritative utterance 
on the subject yet made. 

If he had given himself to literature, he 
would have been a great writer. The range 
of his knowledge, both of man and nature, was 
enormous; his sympathy was universal; his 
mastery of the word, his power of phrase, was 
almost unlimited. His literary product is con- 
siderable and will keep his name alive; but it 
bears no appreciable proportion to the liter- 
ary treasures he squandered in his daily and 
nightly conversation. I recall, with the sharp- 
est regret of my own incapacity of memory, 
the evenings by my fireside, when he poured 
out in inexhaustible profusion his stores of 
fancy and invention. There were scores of 
short stories full of color and life, sketches of 
thrilling adventure, not less than half a dozen 
complete novels, boldly planned and brilliantly 
wrought out,— all ready for the type or the 
pen; which now— an infinite pity!— are only 
of the stuff that dreams are made of. 

Few men had so quick and so sure an eye 
for art. In that first visit to Europe, to which 
I have alluded, he seemed like one to whom 
349 



CLAEENCE KING 

all the scenes he visited had been familiar in 
some antecedent state. His time was limited, 
and his pace, therefore, amazingly rapid. He 
swept through Spain like a breeze. He had 
apparently no preferences. In the space of a 
few weeks, he covered the whole field ; he knew 
the masterpieces of classic and modern paint- 
ing; he was familiar with the syncopated 
melodies of Cuba and Malaga and Andalusia; 
he was an aficionado in fans, embroideries 
and bronzes. Nobody has felt more keenly 
the melancholy charm of Castile ; the proof is 
in that exquisite idyll of the Helmet of Mam- 
brino. Fastidious as he was, he was yet easily 
pleased by whatever was natural and genuine. 
I remember his horror— in the midst of his 
enthusiasm over Spain— at meeting an eminent 
man of letters from New England who had 
found nothing in the Peninsula to suit him, 
and who wound up by expressing his disgust 
that "from Salamanca to Cadiz you could not 
get a fishball." 

All over Europe he scampered with the 

same vertiginous speed, and the same serene 

and genial appearance of leisure, and perfect 

satisfaction and delight with all he saw. The 

350 



CLARENCE KING 

art of Holland was as enchanting to him as 
that of Spain and Italy. His admiration of 
the great men of the past never rendered him 
unjust to the men of the present. His wide 
sympathies comprehended Velasquez and For- 
tuny in a kindred appreciation. He became 
at sight the friend of Mesdag and Israels. I 
took him to the studio of Gustave Dore, and 
in five minutes they were brothers and were 
planning an excursion to Arizona to sketch the 
war dances of the Apaches. A few days later 
the robust Alsatian, who seemed built to last 
a hundred years, was dead, stricken down by 
the terrible pneumonia of those years. 

In England, while as I have said his success 
was universal with all classes, his closet inti- 
macies were with men who were occupied with 
the things of the spirit. Ruskin took him to 
his heart, entertained him at Coniston, and 
offered him his choice of his two greatest 
water-colors by Turner. ' '■ One good Turner, ' ' 
said King, ''deserves another," and took 
both. 

Few men ever can have lived who loved 
knowingly and ardently so many things. All 
the arts gave him joy ; his mind was hospitable 

351 



CLARENCE KING 

to every intellectual delight, the simplest as 
well as the most complex. In music he en- 
joyed Beethoven and the latest rag-time; in 
painting he reveled in the masterpieces of all 
the schools ; in poetry his taste was as keen 
as it was catholic; in literature he liked all 
styles except the tiresome; for years he read 
a chapter of higher mathematics every night 
before going to bed. He had the passionate 
love of nature which only the highest culture 
gives— the sky, the rock, and the river spoke 
to him as familiar friends. 

I imagine that in comparing our impressions 
of him, the thought which comes uppermost 
in the minds of all of us, is that Clarence King 
resembled no one else whom we have ever 
known. The rest of our friends wa divide into 
classes; King belonged to a class of his own. 
He was inimitable in many ways : in his inex- 
haustible fund of wise and witty speech; in 
his learning about which his marvelous humor 
played like summer lightning over far hori- 
zons; in his quick and intelligent sympathy 
which saw the good and the amusing in the 
most unpromising subjects ; in the ease and the 
airy lightness with which he scattered his 

352 



CLARENCE KING 

jeweled phrases ; but above all in his astonish- 
ing power of diffusing happiness wherever 
he went. Years ago, in a well-known drawing 
room in Washington, when we were mourning 
his departure from the Capital, one of his 
friends expressed the opinion of all when he 
said, "It is strange that the Creator, when it 
would have been so easy to make more Kings, 
should have made only one." 



353 



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